Published on the 10/08/2016 | Written by Beverley Head
Australia’s online Census was taken offline following alleged hacking attempts…
After weeks of attempting to placate the Australian public about revelations that in this year’s Census their name and address data would be sought and kept much longer than ever before, and promising that the system was secure, the Australian Bureau of Statistics was forced to shut down its site early on Census night after it was hacked.
Early this morning the website was still dated 9 August and noted that both ABS and Census websites were unavailable. According to the website notice; “The service won’t be restored tonight. We will update you in the morning. We apologise for the inconvenience. There will be no fines for completing the Census after August 9. There’s still plenty of time to complete the Census. Thanks for your patience.”
At time of writing the ABS website has been restored, but the Census remains offline.
According to the ABS it decided to shut down the website after four separate hacks which it claimed had been launched from overseas on Tuesday. Talkback radio has been ablaze with conspiracy theorists conflating the Census attack with the Australia-China spat at the Olympics.
Macquarie Government managing director, Aidan Tudehope, meanwhile said that the distributed denial of service attack on the ABS could have emanated from poorly protected home or business computers which had been infiltrated in advance by hackers.
Whatever the source of the attacks, Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim has wasted no time and announced his office will conduct an investigation into the ABS. He noted that “My first priority is to ensure that no personal information has been compromised as a result of these attacks.”
The ABS has stated it does not believe data collected ahead of the shutdown was compromised and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has previously been briefed on the privacy protections put in place to protect Census data which includes highly personal information such as name and address, marital status, religion, and personal income.
Speaking at ForgeRock’s Identity Summit in Sydney yesterday, KuppingerCole analyst Graham Williamson noted the public concern about the data collected for the Census, particularly name and address data which links Census data with individuals. “When you are dealing with information from customers – the Australian privacy records are quite tight and note that you should not collect more information than you need. You could make an argument that the ABS not need that data.”
No doubt the Privacy Commissioner will consider that as part of his analysis. Similarly proponents of online voting might consider the Census experience a case study in what can go wrong with population-wide online events.
