New Diefenbaker Canada Centre exhibition features Second World War Enigma machine paherald.sk.ca - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from paherald.sk.ca Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
19 July 2021
OTTAWA – Canada joined the United States and other allies on Monday in blaming China for a massive cyberattack that compromised tens of thousands of computers around the world earlier this year.
The attack saw hackers exploit weaknesses in Microsoft Exchange email servers, with the federal government estimating 400,000 servers were compromised before the online assault and server vulnerabilities were revealed in March.
“This activity put several thousand Canadian entities at risk – a risk that persists in some cases even when patches from Microsoft have been applied,” Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said in the statement.
Article content
A U.S. intelligence report in January 2017 said Russian President Vladimir Putin directed an influence campaign including cyber attacks to support Donald Trump, who won the 2016 presidential election. Moscow denies the allegations.
The CSE did not identify particular nations it thought might try to influence Canadian voters.
Officials close to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say he is virtually certain to call an election later this year. During the last federal vote, in 2019, no significant cyber threats were uncovered.
Canada is a lower-priority target compared to other nations, the CSE report concluded. The chances of an adversary actually overturning the results of a Canadian election are almost non-existent, given that voters use paper ballots. (Reporting by David Ljunggren Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Article content
In a statement, Global Affairs Canada named as responsible China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), saying Canada and its allies are “confident” that the state intelligence agency organized the attack. The department also identified on Monday a specific regional office within the MSS that had previously targeted Canada’s defence, biopharmaceutical and oceanic technology sectors in a series of attacks in 2017 and 2018.
We apologize, but this video has failed to load.
Try refreshing your browser. Canada joins allies in publicly blaming China for massive Microsoft Exchange hack Back to video
The statement follows the massive and unusually indiscriminate hack of Microsoft email software earlier this year, which infiltrated an estimated 400,000 servers and caused widespread forced shutdowns of government and corporate operations.
Canada joins allies in blaming China for massive attack on email servers vancouversun.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from vancouversun.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.