Mike Pompeo blasts China's 'coercion' of Australia as cyber-attack likened to Parliament House hack

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has said he raised China’s “coercion” of Australia during a frank, six-hour meeting with China’s top diplomat in Hawaii.

It comes as experts say some of the same computer code and tactics used in cyber-attacks revealed by the Australia prime minister, Scott Morrison, on Friday were also used in a February 2019 hack into Parliament House, which was also blamed on China.

Pompeo said he confronted Yang Jiechi with a list of China’s actions around the globe, including hitting Australia with steep barley tariffs and banning beef exports from four abattoirs after Morrison “had the audacity” to lead global calls for a Covid-19 probe.

Pompeo said he told Yang in Honolulu on Wednesday the US was no longer just listening to what China was saying but was watching its actions.

“We can see their actions,” said Pompeo, speaking at the virtual Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Friday.

“I ticked through a few of them: Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, what they’re doing in India, what they’ve done in the economic zones along the Philippines and Malaysia and Indonesia and Vietnam, the coercion on Australia – when they had the audacity to demand that there would be an investigation of how this virus got from Wuhan to Milan, how this virus got from Wuhan to Tehran, how this virus got from Wuhan to Oklahoma City, and to Belgium and to Spain, and decimating the global economy.”

Earlier, Sean Duca, a cybersecurity expert from Palo Alto Networks, told the ABC the cyber-attacks in Australia had similarities with the February 2019 assault on the Parliament House system.

“We found in analysing the code itself ... the attackers had reused a lot of the code that had been used by other people in the past,” Duca said. “And one particular tool that was used was a tool that was actually used in the February 2019 attack against Parliament House.”

He said it was important every Australian organisation step up their security, patching systems and using multifactor authentication and biometrics.

“Australia is definitely a leading country around driving a digital economy, but there’s attackers out there looking to try and disrupt our economy, and also disrupt our livelihoods,” he said. “We need to think about better, smarter ways of trying to do this.”

On Friday, Morrison called for a renewed focus on cybersecurity in government and business as he briefed reporters on Friday about a large-scale attack by a “sophisticated state-based cyber actor”. While Morrison was reluctant to point to a source, experts said they believed China was behind the attack.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute said the attacks were “95% or more” likely to have been launched from China because of their scale and intensity.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian dismissed the allegations, and took particular aim at ASPI, saying their accusations were “totally baseless nonsense”.

Asked on ABC TV why ASPI was singled out when other experts had also suggested the attacks came from China, Jennings said the institute had done a range of work the Chinese does not like. This included analysis on forced labour using prisoners and on the Chinese agency that pushes propaganda both at home and abroad.

“We have freedom of speech, which is something that you have also not got in China, and I think the Chinese officialdom find that uncomfortable and unusual,” Jennings said.

The decision by the Australian government to raise concerns over cybersecurity came at a time of growing tensions with China, with the two countries falling out over the origin of the coronavirus, trade, travel and, most recently, the death sentence handed to Australian drug smuggler Karm Gilespie.

Federal LNP MP Andrew Laming said the “cacophony” of accusations over the cyber-attack was not helping.

“Clearly there was a line in the sand with [the prime minister’s] statement, but it’s not constructive then for additional commentators to engage in a tit-for-tat,” Laming said.

On Saturday, Australia’s deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, campaigning with Nationals candidate Trevor Hicks for the upcoming Eden-Monaro byelection, said the Australian government took the security of the nation’s data “very, very seriously”.

Labor frontbencher Amanda Rishworth said the priority was for Australian businesses and governments to take precautions against future attacks.