Foreign spies are increasingly using the internet to hack into Government computers, including in an attempt to get information that could be used for weapons of mass destruction, ASIO says.
''ASIO found further evidence of hostile intelligence services using the internet as a means of appropriating confidential Australian Government and business information,'' its latest annual report said.
''State-sponsored efforts to procure materiel and knowledge for weapons programs including weapons of mass destruction continued in 2009-09.''
ASIO director-general David Irvine said internet-enabled espionage was a rapidly growing threat to the national interest.
''Whereas our focus was once on nation states and their human agents, the threat is now more varied and today's response requires high technology to be joined with traditional tradecraft. ASIO's counter espionage expertise is being combined with specialist capability residing in other national security community agencies,'' he said.
''Today's increasingly interconnected world has great benefits, but it also provides new opportunities for state and non-state actors to advantage themselves at Australia's expense. Espionage and foreign interference, for example, threaten not only the integrity of our national institutions but also our economic competitiveness and community cohesion.
''Like terrorism, espionage and foreign interference is enabled by technology and the free flow of people, goods and ideas across borders.''
Australia would remain a terrorist target for the foreseeable future. It said East Africa joined the Middle East and South Asia as the ''primary sources of motivation and capability for extremists in Australia''.
''Small numbers of Australians continue to look to conflict theatres overseas for inspiration and some aspire to participate in the violence or seek to learn from the tactics and techniques employed by extremists there,'' it said.
The number of ''known Islamic extremists those willing to use violence in pursuit of political objectives in Australia is very small but significant and did not change substantially in 2008-09''.
Australians were more likely to be targeted overseas than at home, and ASIO said Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba was ''particularly noteworthy in light of the Commonwealth Games to be held in New Delhi, India in 2010''. Indonesian based Jemaah Islamiyah blamed for the Bali bombings was ''in a consolidation and rebuilding phase, but has not abandoned its violent Islamist goals''.