Foreign spies are suspected to be behind repeated attempts to obtain highly sensitive information about Australia’s future submarines.

Three submarine building companies, in Germany, France and Japan, are vying for the $20 billion contract to construct a new fleet of the marine vessels.

According to News Corp, the bidders were targeted by cyber hackers, potentially Chinese and Russian spies, trying to access top secret information on the Royal Australian Navy’s technical requirements for its new-generation submarines.

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Germany’s TKMS campaign manager for their bid, Manfred Klein, told The Australian there had been attempts to access their information.

“We have about 30 to 40 (hacking) attempts per night, that’s what our IT people say,” he said.

The attacks were aimed at employees at the company’s German shipyard in Kiel. All 120 on the project were targeted, Mr Klein said.

The report said no company had confirmed the origin of the hacking attempts but “privately believe” Chinese, or maybe Russian, spies were behind it.

However, there was a possibility that another bidder was trying to access their plans.

The Federal Government had previously raised cyber security concerns with each of the foreign bidders.

– with AAP