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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Okay, but you do understand that anyone can just say that though, right? Do yo have any public links that you’d be aware of from working in the govt that relates to information on this?
No, they wouldn’t advertise that.
Best you’ll find is news articles about compromises on critical infrastructure. But, even then, the government is going to do its best to bury their incompetence that was the root cause.
Again, I’ve never researched this before (especially so for Quebec), so I guess it is a little surprising that public spending like that wouldn’t have to disclose some specifics around the use of funds and who is involved for contracts.
And like, yeah, but what level of government is this? Was it a consequence of municipal decisions? Provincial funding? The general neoliberalism that has dominated Canadian politics and economics for the past four decades? There are a lot of factors to determine how much of a concern this actually is and how to realistically address it.