Cyber Security Institute

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Risk of cyber-attacks growing: CSIS memo

A top secret memo written by Canada’s spy agency warns that cyber-attacks on government, university and industry computers have been growing “substantially.”  The heavily censored briefing note, obtained by CBC News using Canada’s access to information law, outlines the increasing vulnerability of Canada’s energy, financial and telecommunications systems face from cyber-attackers.  “Compromises of computer and combinations networks of the Government of Canada, Canadian universities, private companies and individual customer networks have increased substantially,” says the June 2009 memo written by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

The report—- by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, the Ottawa-based think-tank SecDev Group and U.S. researchers from the Shadowserver Foundation—- stressed that the federal government needs to take urgent action or risk being targeted by hackers who use social media, such as Twitter, to steal secret government or corporate information.

“In addition to being virtually unattributable, these remotely operated attacks offer a productive, secure and low-risk means to conduct espionage,” the CSIS briefing says.

Government officials have said they are working to develop a framework to deal with cyber-attacks—- the federal government’s throne speech in March promised a cyber-security strategy.  However, Canada still has no official plan for responding to a co-ordinated cyber-attack.  “Canada is without a plan and we have a government that has given us little more than words.

Canada dependent Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre, said Canada needs a “coherent, comprehensive strategy” on cyberspace, given how dependent Canadians are on telecommunications.  “We’re a large landmass with a population spread across the country,” he said.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/05/17/cyber-security-hack-csis.html