Australia’s intelligence boss has warned that people who boast about their access to sensitive information are openly painting themselves as targets for foreign spying operations.
ASIO director-general Mike Burgess revealed details of multiple espionage operations as he used a keynote speech to warn officials, businesses and the general public about interference threats and the impact of lax security.
Russian spies were deported in 2022 after an ASIO investigation found they were “recruiting proxies and agents to obtain sensitive information, and employing sophisticated tradecraft to disguise their activities”, he said on Thursday.
Russia, China and Iran were singled out as adversaries but “you would be genuinely shocked by the number and names of countries trying to steal our secrets”, he said at the annual Hawke lecture at the University of South Australia.
ASIO, the nation’s domestic intelligence agency, disrupted 24 major espionage and foreign interference operations in the last three years, more than the previous eight years combined.
Mr Burgess said spies used a security clearance-holder to obtain information about trade negotiations and convinced one state bureaucrat to log into a database to obtain details of people a foreign regime considered dissidents.
The director-general also detailed how a foreign intelligence service ordered spies to apply for Australian government jobs, including at national security institutions, to access classified information.
Another example included a visiting academic linked to a foreign government breaking into a restricted lab with sensitive technology and filming inside, he said.
“They are just the tip of an espionage iceberg,” Mr Burgess said.
Foreign companies tied to intelligence services had also tried to access private data, buy land near military sites and collaborate with researchers developing sensitive technology.
“In recent years, for example, defence employees travelling overseas have been subjected to covert room searches, been approached at conferences by spies in disguise and given gifts containing surveillance devices,” Mr Burgess added.
Hackers had also broken into the network of a peak industry body to steal sensitive information about exports and foreign investment, as well as into a law firm to take information about government-related cases, he said.
The director-general chided people who held security clearances or who had access to classified information openly promoting themselves on social media, making it easier for them to be targeted by foreign agents.
More than 35,000 Australians indicated they had access to classified or private information on a single professional networking site, he said, adding 7000 referred to working in the defence sector and critical technologies.
Nearly 2500 boasted about having a security clearance, he said.
“All too often we make it all too easy,” he said.
Almost 400 people explicitly said they worked on the AUKUS project, under which Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines as the keystone of its military power.
Mr Burgess put the cost of espionage – including the theft of intellectual property resulting in lost revenue and responding to incidents – at $12.5 billion in 2023/24.
This included cyber spies stealing nearly $2 billion of trade secrets and intellectual property from Australian companies.
The number came from a conservative Australian Institute of Criminology analysis that took into account details for ASIO investigations, he said.
Hackers stealing commercially sensitive information from one Australian exporter gave a foreign country a leg up in a subsequent contract negotiation, “costing Australia hundreds of millions of dollars”, Mr Burgess said.
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