The figures were gathered by the new Cyber Security Operations Centre within the directorate, which provided the figures to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Between January and August 2010, there were 5551 total cyber attacks. The directorate said that no operations had been disrupted by the attacks, but would not comment on whether any data had been stolen.
A Department of Defence spokesperson declined to provide the sources of the attacks. “The very nature of the internet makes it difficult to attribute malicious activity to particular sources,” the spokesperson told the paper.
The Cyber Security Operations Centre was set up in January to provide the government with analysis of cyber attacks against Australian interests and to coordinate operational responses to cyber attacks across the government and systems of “national importance.”
The CSOC identifies malicious activity conducted by foreign hackers by using analytic capabilities and techniques. The center’s computing resources enables the processing of large volumes of data to identify those cyber threats.