Canada Hit by Chinese Cyberattack

Written by FrumForum News on Friday February 18, 2011

img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-59497" title="computer-hacker(2)" src="/files/wxrimport/2011-02/computer-hacker2.jpg" alt="" width="205" height="105" /><The New York Times reports:

OTTAWA — A federal cabinet minister said Thursday that hackers, perhaps from China, compromised computers in two Canadian government departments in early January, leaving bureaucrats with little or no Internet access for nearly two months.

The minister, Stockwell Day, the president of the Treasury Board, told reporters that hackers had infiltrated computers in his department, which supervises the bureaucracy and government operations, as well as in the Department of Finance, which is responsible for the government’s budget and fiscal policy.

“Every indication we have at this point is that our sensors and our cyberprotection systems got the alerts out in time, that the information doors were slammed shut,” Mr. Day said.

He added that the attack, the latest in a series of confirmed assaults on government computer systems, was more directly focused than were previous strikes against Canada.

“It was a significant one — significant that they were going after financial records,” he said.

After the attack was discovered in early January, the government largely isolated computers in the two departments from the Internet. The computers have, for the most part, remained disconnected while security officials searched individual computers for evidence in case of a criminal investigation and to remove the compromising software.

While the attack was not confirmed until late Wednesday, shortly before a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation report about it, signs that something was wrong have been evident for some time. For the past six weeks, thousands of public servants employed by the two departments have either been staying home to use Internet connections or slipping out of their offices to use wireless Internet connections at nearby cafes.

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