CANBERRA, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- The government of Australia's Northern Territory (NT) has said that its IT system was shut down for three weeks following a cyber attack.
The NT Department of Corporate and Digital Development said one of its cloud-based IT systems was taken down by a ransomware attack in 2020 but the integrity of sensitive data was not compromised, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Monday.
"In 2020, a supplier to the NT government was compromised and subsequently 'ransomwared'," the department said in a statement.
"The system was unavailable for three weeks whilst the vendor recovered the environment."
A ransomware attack is a type of cyber attack whereby malicious software locks computer files until the victim pays a ransom.
The supplier did not pay the ransom, instead working with the Australian Cyber Security Center to restore the systems.
"They took the system offline and restored it from backup copies," the department said.
"The confidentiality and integrity of NT government data was not impacted as a result of the incident."
According to the department the NT government's protection systems blocked 46 million emails due to suspicious or malicious content in 2020.
Public servants were regularly targeted by scams including coronavirus-themed attempts to get sensitive information including user names and passwords.
"Malicious documents are occasionally downloaded, however, the anti-virus software running in the NT government computing environment detects and removes them," the department said. Enditem
