Prime minister Anthony Albanese has told Australians to take a “simple” step to combat cyberattacks.
He shared the five-minute smartphone advice while announcing the appointment of Australia’s inaugural national cybersecurity coordinator on Friday.
Albanese warned Australians during the press conference to reboot their phones daily.
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Typically, once hackers gain access to a device or network, they look for ways to persist by installing malicious software to enable zero-click exploits.
Phone manufacturers such as Apple and Google have strong security to block malware from core operating systems, so hackers are encouraged to opt for “in-memory payloads”, which live in the phone’s memory and are harder to detect and trace.
Such hacks can’t survive a reboot, but often don’t need to, since many people rarely turn their phones off.
“We need to mobilise the private sector, we need to mobilise, as well, consumers,” The Guardian reports Albanese said.
“We all have a responsibility. Simple things, turn your phone off every night for five minutes.
“For people watching this, do that every 24 hours, do it while you’re brushing your teeth or whatever you’re doing.”
The sage advice is not new, nor is Albanese the first political figure to share it.
US Senate Intelligence Committee senator Angus King said in 2021 following the NSA’s release of a best practice security guide that the trick is now part of his routine
Regularly rebooting phones won’t stop the army of cybercriminals or spy-for-hire firms, but it can make even the most sophisticated hackers work harder to maintain access and steal data from a phone.
“This is all about imposing cost on these malicious actors,” the US National Security Agency’s cybersecurity directorate technical director Neal Ziring said.
– WITH AP
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