Some interesting links for July 2021 in Cybersecurity in Canada (and around the world). You thought you were the only Phishing attack victim?
Canadian Security Agencies in the News
An op-ed in the Toronto Star says CCCS, the FBI, and the growing global network of cyber-detectives are developing increasingly effective means of preventing ransomware attacks.
Lawyers from Blake, Cassels, & Graydon cite the NCTA in an article about insurance sector regulation. The firm recently released its Canadian Cybersecurity Trends Study 2021, which finds that businesses have failed to upgrade security or put systems in place to prevent attacks.
Anthony Rota intends to take on the Liberal government in a court fight over disclosing documents related to the firing of two scientists at Canada’s highest-security laboratory. Meanwhile, an opinion piece in the National Post says PHAC president Iain Stewart’s career “in a sense mirrors Canada’s balancing act with a nation that is a growing hotbed of science — and alleged plunderer of others’ research.”
The federal government has added two more right-wing extremist groups and an American neo-Nazi to its list of terrorist entities as it tries to counter the rise of white nationalist violence.
In The Globe and Mail, Richard Fadden writes that Canada needs a national inquiry into its handling of COVID-19.
Foreign intelligence and other Nasties
- Portions of a military information campaign meant to influence the Canadian public during the pandemic continued to operate months after the chief of the defence staff at the time ordered it shut down in the spring of 2020.
- Law enforcement in Canada, the U.K., Europe, and the U.S. seized the web domains and server infrastructure of DoubleVPN.
- The NSA’s XKeyscore program first revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013 continues to operate.
- Anthony Finkelstein, the outgoing U.K. chief scientific adviser for national security, offers a unique glimpse into how technology is changing spying and the urgent race to keep up in an interview with the BBC.
- The Biden administration is working to formally attribute the exploitation of vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Exchange Server application.
- A hacker group linked to the Russian state known as Fancy Bear conducted a cyberattack on critical German infrastructure and the country’s banking system in the past few days.
Cybersecurity, issues, and security
- Microsoft was back in the headlines after the company disclosed its third significant cyber incident since December.
- Canada’s Chamber of Commerce says more needs to be done to make sure Canadian businesses and citizens are ready to thwart cyberattacks.
- A Calgary-based financial advisor has been charged amid allegations that he carried out a multimillion-dollar fraud and collected secret commissions.
- Cybersecurity experts say with home security cameras becoming more popular and people working from home during the pandemic, it’s vital the public is educated about how to keep their cameras secure.
- Brandon Wales, the current acting director of the CISA, says the Colonial Pipeline and JBS ransomware attacks are a harbinger of what’s to come on the cyber front and there needs to be a greater focus on shoring up the defences of America’s most important assets.
- Booz Allen Hamilton, a major government cybersecurity contractor, has been helping clients pay ransoms, contradicting U.S. policy.
- The UN Security Council held its first formal public meeting on cybersecurity, addressing the growing threat of hacks to countries’ key infrastructure.
Privacy
- Facial recognition technology used by the Liberals to verify the identities of people voting in the party’s candidate nomination elections may be investigated by privacy commissioners at the federal and provincial levels. That sounds like a no-no?
If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What’s more, you deserve to be hacked.
Former White House Cybersecurity Advisor, Richard Clarke