A Vietnamese man has been jailed for four years by his country's military court after it was found that he had breached security systems at Perth Airport and stolen sensitive information.
Le Duc Hoang Hai used the credentials of a third-party contractor in March 2016 to effect the break-in, according to a report in The West Australian on Monday.
The newspaper quoted Alastair MacGibbon, cyber security adviser to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, as saying Hai had managed to exfiltrate building schematics and details of physical security.
However, he had not accessed radars or other systems concerned with the operation of aircraft, MacGibbon claimed.
{loadposition sam08}Hai was also found to have breached the defences of banks, telecommunications companies and an online military newspaper in Vietnam.
A view of Perth Airport.
The breach was detected by staff at the airport who then contacted the federal cyber security authorities.
MacGibbon told the newspaper that there was no indication that Hai was part of a larger operation or that he had sold the information he obtained to anyone else.
He said it underlined the need for third-party contractors to use better security like two-factor identification, as this method of breaking in — using a third party's credentials — was becoming common.
Photo: courtesy Perth Airport