I group of self-described “hacktivists” who threatened Melbourne Fashion festival with protests against a dress which named Allah are linked to Russian and Sudanese criminal groups, cyber experts have said.

Originally thought to be a coordinated effort from Muslim groups, CyberCX Chief Security Officer Alastair MacGibbon told Gary Adshead on 6PR Mornings the organisation of the attacks pointed to a more structured origin.

“What stood out with Anonymous Sudan is they used very high-volume attacks from reasonably-expensive paid infrastructure on the internet,” Mr MacGibbon said.

“And so their attacks were very big; in fact today Microsoft have just come out and said they were attacked by the same group and actually knocked out some of their cloud services.”

Press PLAY to hear more on the strange hacking story