Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Good morning everyone, and Tim, thank you very much for your warm introduction. Let me also acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet this morning, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. I particularly want to thank the Business Council of Australia for hosting today’s launch and again, acknowledge President Tim Reed and CEO Jennifer Westacott. Congratulations to you both on a very successful annual BCA dinner this week, the inaugural event for the Biggies, which I see having a long and fruitful future.
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On the morning of June 27, 2017, it seemed as if Ukraine had slipped back in time and into the wrong century â almost nothing worked. Not the ATMs, the trains, the airports, the television stations. Even the radiation monitors at the old Chernobyl nuclear plant were down.
Ukraine, in the midst of a long and undeclared war with Russia, had been hit by mysterious blackouts before but this was eating through computer networks at a terrifying pace, turning screens dark across the country. And it seemed to be spreading further than intended, out through Europe and around the globe, paralysing hospitals and companies from London to Denver, even the Cadbury chocolate factory in Tasmania, and bringing swathes of the worldâs shipping to a halt. By the time the culprit â a wild variant of malicious computer code (or worm) known as NotPetya â was stopped hours later, it had looped back into Russia, where it originated, and racked up a