Hackers hit cybersecurity conference

The Australian Institute of Company Directors (AIDC) had some solid names lending support to the launch of the institute’s new set of “cybersecurity governance principles” – a very hot topic in the wake of the Optus and Medibank Private hacks – including the federal minister in charge Clare O’Neil and Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre CEO Rachael Falk.

So it’s less than ideal when an online conference on Monday to launch the principles was – get this – hacked, leaving the institute’s boss Mark Rigotti and LinkedIn, the platform hosting the event with a bit of a PR problem.

Minister Clare O’Neil leant her support to the cybersecurity principals ready to be launched at the conference … which was shut down by hackers. Credit:Paul Jeffers

Thousands of would-be participants began to get antsy when they tried to log on for a 1pm start and the conference didn’t go live on schedule.

As the comments from the waiting participants began to mount, a fake Eventbrite link – which many unsuspecting users clicked upon – was posted in the LinkedIn chat function, leading the institute to plead with participants not to try to use any links posted in the chat.

When an official-looking AICD link appeared to the event, some users who hadn’t learned their lesson the first time round tried to follow it, only to complain that it didn’t work and eventually, about 30 minutes into the debacle, the institute bowed to the inevitable and cancelled the event.

We’ve asked both the institute and LinkedIn what went wrong and have not heard back, but people close to the goings on say it looks like there was a failure of the platform as well as the posting by malicious actors of bogus links and it was unclear as of Monday afternoon if the two occurrences were linked.

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