Australia's spy chief warns on the threat from foreign hackers.

Live from the UK, this is the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service.

I'm William Lee Adams. Good morning.

Australia is increasingly vulnerable to high-impact sabotage from hackers backed by China.

That's the warning from Australia's spy chief, Mike Burgess.

He told business leaders in

Melbourne that there had been multiple attempts to penetrate transport, telecommunications, water, and

energy networks. Let's cross over to the BBC's Nick Marsh in Singapore. Nick, hello.

Hi, William. So some pretty strong accusations there from Australia's head of intelligence.

What's behind them?

Well, we've heard similar kinds of accusations already, haven't we, from spy chiefs in countries

like Britain and the United States. He says that no one truly appreciates, in his words,

how disruptive and how devastating these attacks can be to a country and its economy.

And he spoke about One Nation.

No prizes for guessing which, his words, not mine.

He said One Nation was consistently probing Australia's critical infrastructures looking for vulnerabilities.

And he specifically mentioned two hacking groups. One called Salt Typhoon

and another called Vault Typhoon. He says they work for the Chinese government. Salt Typhoon is

considered to be a group of hackers that spy and Volt Typhoon look more at disrupting and sabotaging systems.

Do we have any idea how much espionage has cost Australia? So Mike Burgess said $8 billion

between 2023 and 2024. He said about $2 billion worth of trade secrets and IP intellectual property were stolen

from Australian companies in just one year. So you can see how there's also a lot of money

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