A provider trialling the National Broadband Network has been hacked by an unemployed self-taught hacker. The 25-year-old man breached Platform Networks, one of the 12 service providers selected for the $36 billion NBN trials, and had access to it for six weeks.
Operating from the NSW central west town of Cowra, it is believed David Cecil, who bears the online alias ‘Evil’, was a lone hacker and spent up to 20 hours a day at his computer in what’s being deemed an Australian first of its kind hack.
Cecil “had basically taken over their system” said Neil Gaughan, the Federal Police Assistant Commissioner.
“If he wished to, he could have actually taken down [Platform’s] whole network.”
It appears that Cecil was not accessing any commercial-in-confidence information, with Gaughan believing he was “mapping the whole background of the IT system.”
Motivating Cecil was his inability to get a job, using the attack to say “You don’t need formal qualifications” to work in the Information Technology industry.
Platform Networks has around 200 wholesale customers, and took preventative measures to defend its network with the David Hooton, the company’s managing director saying “We do whatever we need to do to make sure that our customers are protected.”
Cecil has been arrested and charged with 49 offences over alleged incursions of Platforms Networks, and was refused bail yesterday at a court in Orange, NSW.
The court registrar Ailsa Ryder agreed with the Federal police argument that if freed, Cecil could delete evidence valuable to the case.
