Foreign Hackers Attack Canadian Government

An anonymous reader writes " According to the CBC: 'An unprecedented cyberattack on the Canadian government from China has given foreign hackers access to highly classified federal information, and forced at least two key departments off the internet, CBC News has learned. The attack, first detected in early January, left Canadian counter-espionage agents scrambling to determine how much sensitive government information may have been stolen and by whom.' It should be noted that the Auditor-General warned of this months ago and was ignored by everyone as she usually is. It should also be noted that public sentiment towards China is getting very, very testy."

Re:China Ain't Too Bright

[c0lo]

Great way to get yourself banned from the playground.

This can't happen overnight... it already owns too many balls, not to mention the playground and some referees... better get used to how the game is played nowadays.

How far is too far?

[Haffner]

All the news of China's hacking attempts, compounded with the links many of those have to government, begs the question: "How far is too far?" When will the US (or the international community) hold China accountable and force them to stop these actions? The way I see it, what they are doing is worse than firing shells over a border. This could easily be a buildup for a larger attack, yet no one has done anything substantial yet.

Re:The REAL story

[DarwinSurvivor]

This attack could have been EASILY avoided using 1 simple system: PGP digital signing. Give every government address a PGP key and set up a government public key repository. Any company doing work with the government has no excuse for not being able to do the same.

You then set up the email servers to block any email with attachments that isn't signed by a trusted key.

PGP signing (and even encryption in most cases) is so pathetically easy to set up, the fact that governments don't MANDATE it for internal use (and even external use for anything other than simple civilian inquiries) is absolutely unforgivable.

This is a republican distraction technique

[Anonymous Coward]

The Canadian Republican Party ("Conservative Party of Canada"), is under heat because one of its' ministers has been caught forging official documents and running political interference. Thus, the news of this was leaked to distract the public from government corruption. This is typical of the CPC, as they are known to be a particularly corrupt government.