Fire and rescue service in Victoria, Australia, confirms cyber attack

The fire and rescue service in the state of Victoria, Australia, has shut down its network and turned to operating manually after a cyberattack.

The fire and rescue service in the state of Victoria (FRV), Australia, has shut down its network after a cyber attack launched by “an external third party.” 

Fire Rescue Victoria acting Commissioner Gavin Freeman revealed that the outage was first observed between 4am and 5am on Thursday.

FRV operates 85 fire and rescue stations across the state.

The cyberattack is affecting most of FRV systems, including network, emails and dispatch.

“Importantly, community safety has not been compromised and FRV continues to dispatch crews and appliances through mobile phones, pagers and radios.” reads a statement published on Friday. “Preliminary investigations confirm this has been a cyber-attack by an external third party and that FRV systems are impacted.”

 FRV continues to operate by dispatch crews and appliances through mobile phones, pagers and radios.

“We’re doing it in a more manual way, but it doesn’t have any impact on response times or community safety,” the acting commissioner said.

At the time it was still unclear if FRV has suffered a ransomware attack.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Victoria)

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