Justice Minister Michael Keenan has confirmed to Sky News that eight Australians have had their personal details compromised by I.S.
‘We are aware that there has been a hack that comprised around 1500 people, and eight of those are Australians,’ he told Sky News.
Fairfax Media and News Corp reported on Thursday that Australian Defence Force employees and a Victorian MP are among the eight Australians affected.
However, Mr Keenan refused to confirm the identity of those compromised.
‘We do have those details, but I’m not going to share them publicly. But, obviously, if we felt that anybody was at risk, we would make contact with them.’
At least eight Australians are on the list which was posted on Wednesday by a group calling itself the Islamic State Hacking Division alongside a chilling call for lone-wolf supporters to strike.
The cell is believed to be led by British man Junaid Hussain, a close associate of Melbourne’s Neil Prakash who’s considered by authorities to be Australia’s top IS recruiter.
The list contains the names of more than 1400 people, most of whom are US military personnel.
But it also has the names, departments, email addresses and passwords, and telephone numbers of eight Australians, including a Victorian politician – who AAP has chosen not to name – and ADF personnel.
As well, it purports to include credit card information and addresses of US air force and Department of State employees, and email exchanges between military personnel.
Liberal MP Dan Tehan, who chairs parliament’s intelligence and security committee, said release of the hit-list was ‘very disturbing’.
‘It shows that when it comes to ISIS or Daesh what we have to be prepared to do is we’ve obviously got to degrade the caliphate on the ground but we’ve also got to win the online war on this,’ he said on Thursday.
Australia needed to join the allied air campaign and then help take a campaign, with the US, to the UN security council to get ‘global consensus’ on action in Syria, he said.
The Australian Federal Police said it was aware of reports about the hacking division.
‘As with all matters that could potentially impact safety and security, the AFP will liaise with its federal government and state and territory partner agencies in regard to appropriate activities in response to this,’ a spokesperson.
In a message accompanying the list, Hussain, under the Twitter handle Abu Hussain al-Britani, saying: ‘They have us on their ‘hit list’, and we have them on ours too.’
An IS supporter then tweeted: ‘This information is very useful for lone wolves to act and kill.’
The hack comes after reports last week that Hussain was third on a CIA kill list of IS operatives along with another British citizen, IS recruiter Raphael Hostey – who’s also close to Prakash and named him as his ‘co-worker’.
A message with the list, which is in the form of a spreadsheet, warns ‘the soldiers of the khilafah (sic) … will strike at your necks in your own lands’.
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