Census proved to be a big fail last night. Photo: Adam Ward

That is the modus operandi of Australia’s mysterious Signals Directorate that operates within the Defence Department under intense secrecy.

The work of the ASD is designed to go unseen and unheard but this morning they were on everybody’s lips in the wake of what the Australian Bureau of Statistics initially called a cyber attack on the country’s online Census.

In the wake of the fallout from the catastrophe, the ASD is the body tasked with getting to the bottom of what exactly happened.

The ABS said early Wednesday morning the website had been the victim of a “malicious” distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack from foreign actors designed to compromise the process and ultimately bring down the site.

However shortly after, in a somewhat bizarre press conference, Small Business Minister Michael McCormack appeared to back away from such strong “attack” language.

While some have expressed scepticism over the likelihood of a foreign attack, the ASD is the mysterious government body charged with investigating those apparently responsible.

So what do we know about the Australian Signals Directorate?

When approached by news.com.au in an attempt to learn more about the cloak and dagger activities of the department, an Australian Defence spokesman couldn’t contain his laughter.

“They don’t ever tell us what they’re doing. They’re the Australian Signals Directorate, they don’t talk,” he said.

That pretty much sums it up. They operate in the shadows, and that’s the way they like it.

The government department has its roots in the cementing of ties with the United States Government during the Second World War when Australian Defence personnel were brought together to support General MacArthur’s South-West Pacific campaign by intercepting and decoding Japanese radio signals.

Originally housed in the sleepy Victoria Barracks in Melbourne, the intelligence body moved to Canberra about 25 years ago where it has grown into a hugely important fixture in the country’s defence capabilities.

Former Defence Minister Stephen Smith outside the Signals Directorate in Canberra in 2013.Source:News Limited

PM Julia Gillard tours ‘The Pit’ at Canberra's Defence Signals Directorate in 2013. Picture: Alex EllinghausenSource:News Limited

Dr John Blaxland from the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU said the work they do is “highly technical, highly sensitive” and the place is filled with “extremely bright people working on the inside.”

While the exact number of ASD workers is classified, he said it would be in the hundreds.

Countless freedom of information requests to access the budget of the ASD have been consistently denied by the government.

“They’re front and centre in terms of governance” and with the global rise of cyber warfare the ASD has become “demonstrably important for the government,” Mr Blaxland told news.com.au.

“They have a mandate to provide information security and consult with the government on such issues,” he said.

According to the ASD website, their role includes “collecting foreign intelligence by interception” and “stopping others from doing the same to us”.

Due to the immensely complex world of cyber espionage Dr Blaxland expressed doubt over whether the ASD will be able to provide a definitive answer over the census disruption which left Australians scratching their heads of Tuesday night.

“It’s getting harder and harder to track such attacks but if anyone can do it, it’s the ASD,” he said.

Professor Greg Austin from the Australian Centre for Cyber Security at UNSW said the organisation is a global leader in cyber security.

“The Australian Signals Directorate is one of the top 10 organisations of its kind in the world. If they can’t get to the bottom of it (the Census attack), nobody can,” he said.

That sentiment was echoed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull this morning when he tried to reassure the Australian people over the census attacks, described as an attempt to “frustrate the collection” of Census data.

“The Australian Signal Directorate are the finest, most professional organisation of their kind anywhere in the world. They are extraordinary. They are the experts of the experts,” he said.

You can join ASD to learn more about what they do.Source:Supplied

Currently the ASD’s website is advertising for people to join the organisation and become the “whitehat hackers” to defend Australia from the “dark side”.

Phil Dawson from Deakin University’s Centre For Research In Assessment and Digital Learning was once one of those potential recruits who dreamt of a job with the ASD.

He was studying computer science at the University of Wollongong when things like DDoS attacks first began occurring in the digital realm, he said, and he saw a job with the ASD as a “license to hack”.

“As a kid I thought it would be really cool because you get to do these things that are otherwise illegal,” he recalled.

While it never came to be, it’s easy to see the allure the ASD holds for young computer geeks.

Before taking his current role as Chief Information Security Officer at Telstra, Mike Burgess spent five years as the Deputy Director for Cyber & Information Security at the ASD.

Mr Burgess informed news.com.au that under law he was not able to speak about his time at the Signals Directorate.

However during an extremely rare public visit by a Prime Minister to the ASD headquarters by Julia Gillard in 2013, he said the agency’s work was “necessarily conducted in secret”.

“That helps us protect our capabilities, that helps us generate intelligence that meets national intelligence needs,” he said.

And now those secret operations include trying to find out who was messing with our Census.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull speaks at a press conference in Sydney, Wednesday in the wake of the Census fallout. Picture: Mick TsikasSource:AAP