National Research of Canada Hacked by Chinese

[RGG]

My husband just received an e-mail from the Chief Information Officer for the Government of Canada stating:

"Recently, the Government of Canada, through the work of the Communications Security Establishment, detected and confirmed a cyber intrusion on the IT infrastructure of the National Research of Canada by a highly sophisticated Chinese state-sponsored actor."

He works at the National Institute of Nanotechnology in Edmonton, Alberta.

 

[Eboard10]

Thanks for sharing Rx.

It does amaze me how they seem to already know that the attack comes from a "state-sponsored actor".

I'm sure they have the means to pinpoint the location of the attack but it surprises me how they generally seem to almost immediately know who the people are and their motives.

 

[trendsetter37]

Yea sometimes stories like these incite skepticism on my part. In the world of IT it seems to be pretty easy to mask the source of an attack. Further, what if said attacker attacked from another "victim's" computer remotely and erased the evidence of their intrusion afterwards? Then they (the Canadian government) would trace it back to someone or somewhere that had nothing to do with the attack other than being 'hacked' by the original attacker.

It is all too easy to blame someone or a country for hacking without actually knowing who did it. Unless...they (Canadian gov't) are up on their hardware back-doors, in which case they should not have been 'hacked' in the first place operating under that kind of technical expertise. Which brings me to my next point. Is this really just apart of the over-arching campaign to paint Russia and China in a dark light?

Just my 2 cents though.

Is there a link to this story or was it from an email only?