China presents ‘most sophisticated, active cyber threat’ to Canada, security agency says

Oct. 31 (UPI) — China presents “the most sophisticated and active cyber threat” to Canada, according to Ottawa security officials, who accuse Beijing of targeting all levels of their government as well as public officials for valuable intelligence.

According to the Canadian Center for Cyber Security’s National Cyber Threat Assessment report for the upcoming year, China conducts cyber operations against Canada to achieve high-level political and commercial objectives — from espionage and intellectual property theft to repressing dissents who have fled the nation.

Calling China’s cyber program’s scale, tradecraft and ambitions “second to none,” the report outlines how Beijing’s state-sponsored threat actors consistently conduct cyber espionage against federal, provial, territorial, municipal and Indigenous government networks, gaining access to and comprising 20 of them in the past four years alone.

“While all known federal government compromises have been resolved, it is very likely that the actors responsible for these intrusions dedicated significant time and resources to learn about the target networks,” states the report, released Wednesday.

China targets networks and officials to steal information of strategic, economic and diplomatic importance to give Beijing an edge in bilateral relations, with the report noting an increase in maligned cyber activity from China following events that strain Canada-China relations

Threat actors also target Canadian government officials critical of China, as well as activists, journalists and diaspora communities in an effort to silence them, it said.

“PRC actors very likely facilitate transnational repression by monitoring and harassing these groups online and tracking them using cyber surveillance,” it said, referring to China by the initials of its official name, the People’s Republic of China.

Those in Canada potentially targeted by China are members of the so-called Five Poisons : Falun gong, Uyghurs, Tibetans and Taiwanese independence and pro-democracy activists.

As proof, the report states that China has been linked to targeting Uyghurs worldwide, but also in Canada, with spear phishing emails and spyware.

Russia, Iran, North Korea and India were also named in the report as posing cyber threats to Canada.