Parliament strengthens its defenses against cyberattacks targeting elected officials

Photo: Sean Kilpatrick The Canadian Press The House of Commons is now immediately notifying MPs targeted by serious threats.

Faced with a “staggering volume” of cyberattacks targeting Canadian elected officials, the House of Commons in Ottawa has had to step up its security and communications protocols.

Clerk of the House Eric Janse and other officials from his administration were asked to appear before a parliamentary committee Tuesday about a cyberattack targeting a group of parliamentarians whose details were delayed.

Earlier this year, Canadian parliamentarians learned that they had been targeted by the APT31 group, a Chinese hacking organization, in 2021. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, the group that the targeted MPs were part of, had been informed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Several MPs later lamented that they had not been informed earlier by the federal government or one of Canada’s security services.

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis, one of the 18 MPs targeted by the hacking attempt, even raised a question of privilege over what he considered an “unacceptable” failure by the government to inform parliamentarians targeted by China.

“We’re getting more than “500 million attacks in one year. We can't report all the attacks,” House of Commons Chief Administrator Stéphan Aubé told the committee on Tuesday.

He stresses, however, that the House of Commons now immediately informs MPs who are the target of serious threats.

“If the 2021 incident happened today, our reaction and that of our partners would be very different. “I think everyone has learned lessons and better measures are now in place,” Clerk Eric Janse also testified.

Communication issues

When questioned by committee members, Benoit Dicaire, the House of Commons' chief information officer, assured that the protocols involving the various Canadian security agencies had been revised following the incident, which allows the House to have access to the information needed to “communicate more quickly.”

This is not the first time sensitive information has been withheld from MPs. Last year, Conservative MP Michael Chong discovered in a report in the Globe and Mail that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had information that the Chinese government was looking for ways to intimidate him and his family in Hong Kong.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said they were never made aware of the allegations.

Trudeau later said intelligence agencies had a duty to promptly inform MPs of any threats against them, whether they were considered credible or not.

A recent report from the Canadian Centre for Cyber ​​Security found that China’s “broad and vigorous cyber program” “represents the most active and sophisticated cyber threat to Canada today.”

The report also notes that at least 20 networks associated with federal departments and agencies have been compromised by Chinese cyber threat actors in the past four years.