Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has asked his advisor on cyber security to provide a report on the international Yahoo hack.
A number of federal politicians were reportedly among the one billion victims of the breach, according to the ABC.
The ABC reported the log-in details and other data of politicians including Social Services Minister Christian Porter, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen.
Mr Turnbull said he was unaffected by the 2013 hack but he has urged all Australians to be cyber aware.
“So much of our lives are lived in the digital domain that cyber vulnerability is a very real issue,” he told reporters in Queensland.
Australians with email accounts should be using a number of security measures, the prime minister said.
“Use two-factor authentication so that, even if somebody has your password, they can't get into your account, they can't get into your email, without having the code that is sent to the authentication application on your own phone,” he said.
“You can only mitigate security risk but that is a very important level of mitigation.”
If politicians’ accounts were affected, it’s unlikely any sensitive data has been compromised, the prime minister said.
He has asked his cybersecurity adviser Alastair MacGibbon to provide a report into the hack.
“The criminals gained access to these one billion records in 2013, so the damage that is likely to have been done would have been done by now,” Mr MacGibbon said.
“This sets a new sad benchmark, a billion records, but it won't be the last time we see large breaches, it's the new norm.”
Using difficult to guess passwords and changing them often was also good practice, Mr MacGibbon said.
- with AAP
