Hackers hit Canadian Government sites

Malicious hackers can be based in China that managed to fool Canadian federal, your IT staff to provide access to computers of Government, leading to severe Internet restrictions on Board of the Treasury and the Department of finance, CBC News reported last week.

Artwork: Diego AguirreAlthough the Government has so far provided little information on violation, CBC said the attack first emerged in January and cut off Internet access to thousands of public servants, even if the service has been slowly returning to normal. There was no confirmation so far that the personal information of Canadians have been compromised or lost.

What the CBC described as an attempt to "Executive spear phishing, hackers used fake emails to switch themselves as leaders for it staff at the two federal departments and the password prompt, while other agents have received email with attached documents.

In response to media reports, Treasury Board has issued a brief statement acknowledging he had detected an "unauthorized attempt to gain access to its networks", but not provided more details. "The employee Internet access was limited for the moment," said spokesman Jay Denny.

Toronto Star said former Federal Secretary, CIO and Treasury Board, Michelle of Auray asked staff for a list of websites that they believe are essential to their jobs.

Sources told CBC that it is not clear that cyber-attackers are Chinese. Servers based in China can simply were used to route the attacks from elsewhere. Chinese officials denied any connections to attack immediately.

"The claim that the Chinese Government supports Internet hacking is groundless," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters at a regular briefing, according to the Hindustan Times. "The Chinese Government attaches importance to the security of computer networks and calls for computer and Internet users to comply with laws and regulations".

For years, Auditor General Sheila Fraser has been warning about "flaws" that could potentially put the Federal Government is infrastructure at risk. More recently, as CATA Alliance groups have called for Canada follow the example of the United States in the appointment of a coordinator of computer security to ensure a unified response to security incidents, build partnerships between government agencies, encourage new technologies and raise awareness of safety issues.