By David Wroe and national security correspondent
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has acknowledged foreign agents may be trying to gather compromising material on individual Australian politicians through cyber attacks, while a Labor MP has said parliamentarians themselves are the "weakest link".
Following political ructions after Russia used hacking to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election, and unconfirmed reports that Moscow has gathered embarrassing material on President Donald Trump, Mr Turnbull announced that Australia's electronic spy agency would brief political parties on what they needed to do to protect themselves.
He did not rule out that malicious actors could already have gathered material in a bid to embarrass or blackmail Australian politicians.
"I would only be speculating on that but clearly that is a vector," he said.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's cyber security adviser Alastair MacGibbon.Credit: Andrew Meares
However, he added that he was "not aware of evidence in recent times that a foreign country has sought to influence an Australian election".
Labor backbencher Tim Watts, a former senior manager at Telstra, wrote in a blog post before Mr Turnbull's announcement that there had been little organised cybersecurity advice for MPs and "as a result, poor cyber-hygiene is rife among MPs, candidates, political staff and volunteers".
While their Parliament House email accounts were protected by government security specialists, many used private accounts and other communication platforms that were vulnerable.
He said it was "more likely than not" average MPs had already been compromised "without even knowing it".
Labor MP Tim Watts.
Alastair MacGibbon, Mr Turnbull's special adviser on cyber security, said this was "one of the reasons my role was created - to drive that discussion and make sure there's a greater awareness".
He said MPs, along with the public and business needed to be better educated in protecting themselves.
Cyber attacks could be launched for traditional intelligence-gathering, or for strategic release to influence elections, or to change the behaviour of office-holders by gathering personal information about them that might cause embarrassment.
"I don't think we should expect MPs to be masters of this. We're going to help the political parties … reduce the likelihood that someone is trying to influence and election who's not a voter," Mr MacGibbon said.
Mr Watts told Fairfax Media on Tuesday that while the classified material handled by cabinet ministers was protected, new MPs needed better security because foreign spy agencies could gather material on them that would be useful years later as the MPs climbed to positions of higher power.
"It's about looking at building resilience outside the sphere of people who hold classified material now and into the orbit of all actors in our political system," he said.
Mr Turnbull, who branded cyber attacks "the new frontier of warfare" and "the new frontier of espionage", agreed MPs needed "better practices".
He said the greatest vulnerabilities were so-called "warmware" – people failing to protect themselves through tough passwords and vigilance against suspect emails or hardware devices.