Chinese Hackers Compromised Multiple Canadian Government Networks For Years, Stole Info: Security Agency

Authored by Andrew Chen via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Cyber threat actors from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have been implicated in multiple breaches of networks associated with federal government agencies and departments, according to a report from the national cybersecurity agency.

CSE chief Caroline Xavier appears at the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa on Sept. 26, 2024. The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

“Over the past four years, at least 20 networks associated with Government of Canada agencies and departments have been compromised by PRC cyber threat actors,” said the National Cyber Threat Assessment 2025-2026, released Oct. 30 by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.

The centre identifies China as the top threat actor targeting Canada, noting that its cyber operations are “second to none” in scale, technique, and ambition. Beijing’s objectives include espionage, intellectual property theft, malign influence, and transnational repression, the centre says. 

While the report highlights China’s hacking of 20 federal government networks in the past four years, information elsewhere in the report shows that Chinese hackers have had access to multiple government networks longer than that. The report says that Chinese agents have compromised Canadian government networks over the past five years, collecting communications and other valuable information.

While all known federal government compromises have been resolved, it is very likely that the actors responsible for these intrusions dedicated significant time and resources to learn about the target networks,” the report reads.

At a press conference on Oct. 30, Caroline Xavier, chief of the Canadian Communications Security Establishment (CSE), would not  comment on the details of the breaches, but said mitigation measures had been “effective.”

“The key message for us—when there are incidents that occur—is really being focused on ensuring [we] minimize the impact to the government department that may have been compromised. And that is exactly where our focus has been,” she told reporters. “We do feel that the measures were taken to be able to mitigate any of the risks, and to address the incidents in an effective manner.”

The cyber centre is hosted within CSE, Canada’s electronic spy agency, which is responsible for collecting signals intelligence and defending against cyberattacks.

China Targets

In addition to federal agencies, provincial and territorial governments are also seen as valuable targets for Beijing, the report said, noting that these governments hold decision-making power over regional trade and commerce, including the extraction of critical minerals and other natural resources.

Xavier said this targeting indicates Beijing is a “sophisticated, consistent, and persistent actor,” and that Canada needs to address the threat with a more comprehensive approach.

“We have work to do as a nation, to continue to work, in particular with the provinces, territories, indigenous communities, because we recognize that we’re all vulnerable, or we all could be vulnerable, and we really want to continue to raise Canada’s cyber resilience,” she said.

The cyber centre also echoed previous reports from various human rights groups, warning that Beijing’s transnational repression has primarily targeted five specific communities, referred to by the regime as the “five poisons.” These include Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, supporters of Taiwanese independence, and pro-democracy activists.

PRC actors very likely facilitate transnational repression by monitoring and harassing these groups online and tracking them using cyber surveillance,” the report said. “For example, the PRC has been publicly linked to cyber espionage operations against the Uyghur minority group, including members living in Canada, using spear phishing emails and spyware.”

Other Countries Named

Other state-backed threat actors highlighted in the cyber centre report include Russia, Iran, and India.

Russia’s cyber operations are characterized as “a multi-layered strategy” that combines conventional cyber espionage and computer network attacks with disinformation. Its primary goal is to enhance Russia’s global status while undermining democratic institutions in Canada and among its allies.

A specific case cited in the report involves a breach detected by Microsoft in January, where a Russian state-sponsored cyber threat actor known as Midnight Blizzard accessed the company’s cloud-based enterprise email service.

The group infiltrated correspondence between Microsoft and government officials in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Initially, the actors sought information about Russia itself, but later used personal data and credentials from the emails to gain access to Microsoft customer systems.

Meanwhile, the report said Iran has been expanding its cyberattacks to western countries amid its ongoing military conflict with Israel.

“Iran has taken advantage of its back-and-forth cyber confrontation with Israel to improve its cyber espionage and offensive cyber capabilities and hone its information campaigns, which it is now almost certainly deploying against targets in the West,” the report said.

During the press conference, Xavier also identified India as an “emerging threat” to Canada.

“India very likely uses its cyber program to advance its national security imperatives, including espionage, counterterrorism, and the country’s efforts to promote its global status and counter narratives against India and the Indian government,” the report said.

Citing her recent testimony before the foreign interference inquiry, Xavier noted India could potentially “flex those cyber threat actions against Canadians” amid ongoing diplomatic tensions.

Earlier this month, Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, prompting a reciprocal move by India, which also expelled six Canadian diplomats. This dispute arose after the RCMP announced its investigation into criminal activities allegedly involving “agents of the Government of India.” 

‘Ever-Present’ Threat

The Centre for Cyber Security says Canada has entered a new era in which cyber threats are “ever present.”

“Canadians will increasingly feel the impact of cyber incidents that have cascading and disruptive effects on their daily lives,” the report said.

The centre says the threat has expanded as Canadians increasingly rely on online platforms and digital technologies to go about their lives.

“These systems record and process vast amounts of data about us, often over poorly secured or untrustworthy digital networks,” it said.

Aside from the threats from hostile state actors, the centre notes that the cybercrime business model is “underpinned by flourishing online marketplaces” where leaked data is sold along with cyber tools for criminals.

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Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//


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The Recession Of 2025 Will Be Backdated

The Recession Of 2025 Will Be Backdated

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

It’s a reasonable supposition that a recession will become obvious to all by next summer. It will then be declared by year’s end. The following year it could become backdated with data revisions that take us to 2022. At that point, it will become obvious to people that we have a major problem. Money velocity will freeze up and banks will start failing.

That’s a lot to consider so let’s unpack this a bit.

Consider history. In October 1929, the stock market crashed. Many people on Wall Street suffered but Main Street was largely unaffected. The Hoover Administration got busy with some efforts to loosen credit but without success as credit markets slowly dried up. Throughout 1931, public sentiment toggled between pessimism and denial. Many people thought it was a temporary blip that would go away.

No one called it the Great Depression. That came much later.

By the election of 1932, enough people were concerned about the economic situation but the campaigns did not really focus entirely on that. The big issue was Prohibition. Hoover did not have a strong opinion but Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke out loudly for repeal. His fiscal policy pushed frugality and balanced budgets, and he decried Hoover as a big spender.

FDR won of course. But before the inauguration, the economic environment became dramatically worse. A banking crisis developed, and FDR used emergency powers to impose a bank holiday and repeal the gold standard. As part of this, he imposed a ban on private gold ownership. It was enforced with fines and jail terms.

Central planning then ensued with massive fiscal stimulus, crazed agricultural policies that required digging up crops to create artificial shortages, and price and wage controls.

All of this unfolded over the course of four years, the first three of which were not at the time thought to be much of a crisis generally speaking. Today it is obvious that 1929 marked the beginning but that was not apparent at the time.

It is not discernible in our time that we are already in recession but that is due to some brittle statistical measures. If you extend the inflation numbers to include housing and interest, plus extra fees and shrinkflation, minus hedonic adjustments, and then adjust the output numbers by the result, you end up in a recession now.

Do you remember the two successive quarters of declining GDP in 2022? At the time, it was said that this was not a recession, even though every definition of recession was two declining quarters of GDP. It was said at the time that the data was not enough to declare it because labor markets were strong.

Trouble was that this too was an illusion. Most of the job gains were in fact in part-time jobs and multiple job holders, and those gains went to foreign-born workers and not natives. Overall, jobs held by native-born workers that are full-time are down relative to four years ago. No one in the mainstream press admitted this.

The jobs report that came out last week was the first glimpse of truth because it was brazenly awful, underperforming every prediction. It also chronicled major job losses in manufacturing and professional services. Those are hard-core recession signs that are likely going to worsen.

All this data will start to be revised next year as the conventional wisdom will change. It will be widely admitted that the economy is weaker than we previously supposed. This will happen regardless of who wins. For one winner, it will serve as an attack and for another winner, it will serve as pretext for extreme intervention like the promised price controls on rents and groceries.

Meanwhile, we will be revisiting the inflation problem. The Fed has already added $1.1 trillion to the money stock over the last 12 months plus lowered interest rates. The effect of this easing has not affected mortgage rates because investors are expecting higher rates in the future. The Fed can control overnight lending but the shape of the yield curve is determined on the bond market.

If major changes are proposed in terms of spending cuts, the bond market will freak out and the United States could repeat the experience of the UK just a few years ago. New prime minister Liz Truss was quickly hounded out of office on grounds that her spending cuts had spooked the bond markets.

U.S. creditworthiness is already on a hair trigger as the debt pileup has reached astronomical levels. The entire purpose of this wild spending has been to balloon the GDP as much as possible to prevent a recession from being declared already. The debt-to-GDP level is now higher than it was in the Second World War, and getting worse by the day.

(Data: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), St. Louis Fed; Chart: Jeffrey A. Tucker)

The easy solution is dramatic spending cuts but that won’t happen if the bond market starts panicking with quality downgrades. There are only two private institutions that grade U.S. bonds and both are subject to being muscled by political concerns. Such an event could easily overwhelm a new administration. The political people will go into overdrive and demand that the Fed accommodate the bond market, fueling more inflation.

I truly wish that none of this would happen but the truth is that economic forces are always and everywhere more powerful than political ones. There are structural problems alive in U.S. economic life today that are not easily solved by policies of any sort.

But in U.S. political culture, whatever takes place under one president’s watch is blamed on the officeholder regardless. That the circumstances have been created by the previous administration or have nothing to do with existing policy has no relevance in the political culture. That alone makes it nearly impossible for a sitting president to plead with the public for patience.

In 1981, Reagan did make a plea for patience, and lost a great deal of Congressional support in the midterm elections of 1982. He was fortunate that the economic recovery came in time for the 1984 election that granted him a second term. But that was a very close call, and that was also under conditions that were not as structurally dire as conditions today.

As a result, the new administration will encounter pressure to achieve the impossible: immediately improve American living standards without imposing any pain at all. Such a demand is impossible to grant. As a result, whatever happens in this election will likely be reversed in the midterms of 2026, meaning that we cannot count on any kind of policy consistency for many years to come.

Maybe I’m wrong. I hope so. But from what I’m looking at, I don’t see how a frank acknowledgement of current conditions can be put off for another year.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2024 – 06:30

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