The keen investigative journalists at the CBC have discovered that cyber-hackers, probably based in China, made at least two raids on Canadian government servers and databases.
The network said “Sources have confirmed that the attackers successfully penetrated the computer systems at the federal government’s two main economic nerve centres, the Finance Department and Treasury Board.” The target of the activity may have been passwords that would allow further access to Canadian government data.
What will the Canadians do about the outrage? Nothing.
The Canadian government has already begun to equivocate about the nature of the trouble. The attacks probably came from inside China. Ottawa is not ready to say so officially. Hackers, especially the best ones, can cover their tracks well so it is hard to make a clear set of charges.
Canada will also let the matter go for another reason. It has no recourse it is willing to take other than objection.
The US has complained on a number of occasions that hackers, presumably of Chinese origin, have broken into the online systems of government agencies and large America companies. The broad problem has gained widening attention in Congress. The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act was just introduced in the Senate. The legislation will enable the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security to develop cyber attack prevention plans, if it is signed into law.
The federal money from the The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act may help develop better means to find and counter threats. That has not done much to help the private sector where malicious programmers seem to be consistently one step head of online security.
What the Canadian and US governments need to do to offset China’s efforts is to specifically identify the nature and source of each attack. The evidence has to be clear and nearly iron-clad. And, there has to be some significant sanction.
China and its hacker communities, which may be supported by the government or not, do not have much to fear. The moment a Western government releases the any real details of a series of attacks, it give malicious programmers another edge, if only a modest one, as they search for weaknesses in cyber-defenses. The challenge to China would also have to carry a specific and harsh set of consequences. The US has not been willing to take that path with the problem of yuan manipulation or barriers to some American exports set by the People’s Republic.
The US, Canada and other Chinese trade partners continue to back away from a full-scale challenge of the business practices of the Communist central government. That may be the most prudent route and the one least likely to unsettle global trade. In the meantime, China will do as it sees fit with the way it allows its own citizens to use the Internet and how it utilizes the worldwide web as a weapon against other countries.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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