Canada Hit by Cyberattack From China
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.