Slashdot Mirror
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."
Canada's largest export partner is the US, the second is Europe(all). All of Asia combined ranks 3rd, but we still export more materials to Japan and India than China. Unless you're counting either coal, or nickle. Really if you eliminate Canadian resources? The world goes for a shit spin, mighty fast because ~30-35% of the market just went poof.
Really though? If China pulls shit and we take our ball and go home, not much will happen in Canada. We have other markets(south america, and russia--along with various others not mentioned) which we can continue to supply goods to. It will hurt china more, than it will hurt us.
Om, nomnomnom...
> This attack could have been EASILY avoided
> using 1 simple system: PGP digital signing.
The Canadian government is in the process of rolling out a digital signature system... unfortunately, it's Entrust rather than an open solution like PGP, and it looks like it's going to be cumbersome enough that it won't get used in situations it's not absolutely necessary for.
Because it's not based on open standards it can't be used for external communications which makes it rather infeasible to block all unencrypted attachments. Which would be a bad idea, anyways, given the small fraction of "protected" information on unclassified networks (i.e. ones which communicate with the outside world).
Log in or piss off.
Which part of the country do you live in? In general it seems you're correct. However it's worth mentioning that out here in the frozen prairies much of the current economic strength, especially in Saskatchewan, has been coming from potash. You can't hear a discussion about potash and not hear China mentioned at least once, China is a huge buyer of the potash produced here. The price of potash has gone up significantly in recent years and they rely on it. Having China refuse to buy potash might not hurt people out in the east, but in the prairies we certainly would be impacted by it.