Ausatralia joined the UK in accusing Russia of using cyber attacks to sew chaos in order to undermine Western democracies.

Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) says the Russian military intelligence (GRU) employs army of hackers and cyber vandals to attack events and institutions going far beyond the 2016 US Presidential Election. 

"While Australia was not significantly impacted, this activity affected the ability of the public in other parts of the world to go about their daily lives," said Prime Minister Scott Morrison.  "This is unacceptable and the Australian Government calls on all countries, including Russia, to refrain from these types of malicious activities.

"Cyberspace is not the Wild West. The international community - including Russia - has agreed that international law and norms of responsible state behaviour apply in cyberspace," he added, "By embarking on a pattern of malicious cyber behaviour, Russia has shown a total disregard for the agreements it helped to negotiate."

The UK said that in addition to the US presidential election, Russia was almost certainly behind the BadRabbit and World Anti-Doping Agency attacks of 2017, and the theft of emails from a UK-based TV station in 2015.

"The GRU's actions are reckless and indiscriminate: they try to undermine and interfere in elections in other countries," said British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.  "Our message is clear - together with our allies, we will expose and respond to the GRU's attempts to undermine international stability."

Russia has in the past denies all such allegations.