Australian defence officials caught up in cyberattack at Singapore hotel
Senior Australian defence officials have become entangled in a data leak after "sophisticated" hackers breached cybersecurity systems at a Singapore hotel.
From May to July this year, customer data was stolen from eight Shangri-La hotels across Asia, including the five-star Singapore hotel where Defence Minister Richard Marles held high-level talks with his Chinese counterpart.
In June, Marles, senior ADF officers and defence department officials attended the Shangri-La Dialogue regional security conference, held in the Singapore hotel with the same name.
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Defence Minister Richard Marles held high level talks in June at a Singapore hotel that was targeted by cyberhackers. Nine
Marles met with China's Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe on the sidelines of the event.
It was the first high-level contact between the two governments since the raising of diplomatic tensions in 2020.
A Defence Department spokesperson told 9news.com.au it was aware of a data breach involving Shangri-La hotels.
They said the department was "working with the company to understand the impact on Australian Defence attendees at the Shangri-La Dialogue".
"Defence will work with any impacted personnel to minimise potential risks that could arise from this breach," the spokesperson said.
The Shangri-La Group has insisted some general guest information may have been accessed during the cyberhack but sensitive information related to identification documents and personal details were fully encrypted.
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Top Australian defence officials have been caught up in a cyberhack of the Shangri-La hotel in Singapore. AP
Singaporean media reported the Shangri-La Group sent an email to affected guests last Friday informing them of the data breach.
The company's senior vice-president for operations and process transformation, Brian Yu, said: "A sophisticated threat actor managed to bypass Shangri-La's IT security monitoring systems undetected and illegally accessed the guest databases."
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