Russian cybercriminals managed to hack into a Quebec municipality’s water treatment plant systems and had the ability to wreak havoc on the crucial infrastructure before getting caught, according to Canada’s cyber spy agency.
In its latest annual report released Monday, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) said that it detected over 3,200 cyber incidents affecting either federal government organizations or one of ten critical infrastructure sectors, such as energy, critical minerals and water.
In one particular case discussed in the report, the signals intelligence agency said it was advised last October that Russian hacktivist group NoName had broken into the Quebec water plant’s network and gained access to many crucial systems.
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According to CSE, NoName claimed it had gained the “ability to covertly control pumps, chlorine dosing, pressure settings and monitoring/alerts systems.” The report does not identify the impacted Quebec municipality.
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The annual report … points to two main state cyber adversaries: Russia and China. The report emphasizes that both countries pose a growing threat in the Canadian Arctic, where challenges posed by adversaries go “beyond traditional military and cyber threats to include economic and influence-related activities that seek to shape access, infrastructure, and decision-making in the region.”
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Yeah I think the size of the municipality is a great thing to keep in mind for this, as I’m sure a more rural, low population, and dispersed municipality would likely have less funding to update and maintain these systems. What I’m curious about is if this is a consequence of that neoliberalization – whether this was a result of reduced public funding and therefore the adoption of privatized, profit-driven solutions – or if it was simply a consequence of older infrastructure and poor discipline. Those are very different explanations that present their own risks for the rest of us to be concerned about and options for what we are able to do about it.