Australian intelligence agencies have determined that the Russian military and its intelligence arm, the GRU, was responsible for several cyber attacks, including on the US Democratic National Committee in 2016.
Prime minister Scott Morrison and foreign minister Marise Payne said that Australian intelligence agencies had been able to attribute four attacks to the Russian military: the 2017 BadRabbit ransomware attack in Ukraine and Russia, the 2016 hack of the Anti-Doping Administration that resulted in the release of the confidential medical files of several athletes, the hacking of the US Democratic National Committee in 2016, and the 2015 hack of a small UK-based TV station.
Morrison and Payne said Australia "was not significantly impacted" but the hacks resulted in millions of dollars in economic damage in other parts of the world.
"This is unacceptable and the Australian government calls on all countries, including Russia, to refrain from these types of malicious activities," the pair said in a statement.
"Cyberspace is not the Wild West. The international community – including Russia – has agreed that international law and norms of responsible state behaviour apply in cyberspace. By embarking on a pattern of malicious cyber behaviour, Russia has shown a total disregard for the agreements it helped to negotiate."
As Australia prepares for its upcoming federal election sometime before May next year, the parliamentary committee responsible for reviewing elections is currently looking into whether Australia's own elections could be manipulated by cyber attacks, or the spreading of so-called fake news.
Twitter told the committee in a submission that during the 2016 federal election, the social media giant was "not made aware of any activity related to the interference with the exercise of voting rights in Australia".
Facebook said it was "unaware of any irregularities" during either the 2016 election or the postal survey on same-sex marriage in 2017.