I’ve been very critical of the Canadian Government for a very long time as they don’t really seem to have their act together when it comes to defending themselves against cyber threats. Case in point is the Heartbleed bug which took down the CRA during tax season as well as other government websites. Oh yeah, personal data was swiped before someone got charged with the hack. That was pretty bad. But it was actually much worse as CBC reports:
The number of so-called “reconnaissance” events — in which attackers got into federal systems to assess their weaknesses — rose dramatically in the spring of 2014, to 91 detected intrusions. That was up from just seven in the fall of 2013.
And the number of actual information breaches rose sharply in the same period, increases that were “directly attributable to the OpenSSL ‘Heartbleed’ vulnerability,” says a heavily censored document from the Public Safety Department.
A copy of the internal cyber-security newsletter, with the headline “Heartbleed event increases number of reconnaissance and breach events,” was obtained by CBC News under the Access to Information Act following months of delay.
Previously, RCMP alleged only that a 19-year-old London, Ont., man had accessed hundreds of social insurance numbers by exploiting the bug in tax computers.
But the documents show Heartbleed-related attacks were much broader, involving other departments, though no information was provided on the number or identities of other attackers, or what data they may have stolen.
Well, that really gives me the warm fuzzies. That’s sarcasm by the way because I am truly not impressed. Clearly the Canadian Government is asleep at the switch when it comes to protecting themselves from these sorts of threats. One wonders what it will take for them to take cybersecurity seriously. A major hack perhaps?
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This entry was posted on December 11, 2015 at 9:06 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Canada, Heartbleed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Canadian Government’s Exposure To Heartbleed Worse Than Previously Thought
I’ve been very critical of the Canadian Government for a very long time as they don’t really seem to have their act together when it comes to defending themselves against cyber threats. Case in point is the Heartbleed bug which took down the CRA during tax season as well as other government websites. Oh yeah, personal data was swiped before someone got charged with the hack. That was pretty bad. But it was actually much worse as CBC reports:
The number of so-called “reconnaissance” events — in which attackers got into federal systems to assess their weaknesses — rose dramatically in the spring of 2014, to 91 detected intrusions. That was up from just seven in the fall of 2013.
And the number of actual information breaches rose sharply in the same period, increases that were “directly attributable to the OpenSSL ‘Heartbleed’ vulnerability,” says a heavily censored document from the Public Safety Department.
A copy of the internal cyber-security newsletter, with the headline “Heartbleed event increases number of reconnaissance and breach events,” was obtained by CBC News under the Access to Information Act following months of delay.
Previously, RCMP alleged only that a 19-year-old London, Ont., man had accessed hundreds of social insurance numbers by exploiting the bug in tax computers.
But the documents show Heartbleed-related attacks were much broader, involving other departments, though no information was provided on the number or identities of other attackers, or what data they may have stolen.
Well, that really gives me the warm fuzzies. That’s sarcasm by the way because I am truly not impressed. Clearly the Canadian Government is asleep at the switch when it comes to protecting themselves from these sorts of threats. One wonders what it will take for them to take cybersecurity seriously. A major hack perhaps?
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This entry was posted on December 11, 2015 at 9:06 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Canada, Heartbleed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.