Eight days to defuse parlt cyber attack

It took the government eight days to shut down a sophisticated cyber attack on Australia's major political parties earlier this year.

Liberal, Labor and National Party platforms were hacked during a breach of the Australian Parliament House network in January.

A small amount of non-sensitive data taken from the network but there was no evidence of an insider threat, senate estimates were told on Thursday.

A small number of users visited a website outside of parliamentary management that had been compromised, causing malware to be injected into the network.

The government would not reveal why it took so long to defuse the attack and said that "sensitive" information was not appropriate for a public forum.