Chinese hacking is biggest state cyber threat to Canada, says spy agency

OTTAWA: An aggressive Chinese hacking campaign is the most active state cyber threat to Canada, the country’s signals intelligence agency said on Wednesday, in the latest warning about clandestine activity by Beijing.

In a new threat assessment, the Communications Security Establishment Canada also said Russia’s cyber program was trying to confront and destabilize Canada and its allies and cited Iran as a threat.

The agency’s report comes as bilateral relations between Beijing and Ottawa are poor. In April, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said China had tried to meddle in the last two Canadian elections.

China, known formally as the People’s Republic of China, regularly dismisses such charges. “The PRC’s expansive and aggressive cyber programme presents the most sophisticated and active state cyber threat to Canada today,” the agency report said.

Chinese hacking served high-level political and commercial objectives, including espionage, intellectual property theft, malign influence, and transnational repression, the agency said, adding that the PRC cyber programme’s scale, tradecraft, and ambitions “were second to none”.

The Chinese embassy in Ottawa was not immediately available for comment. In May, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service - the country’s main spy agency - said persistent Chinese election meddling had the potential to undermine Canadian democracy.

Members of former US president Donald Trump’s family and officials from the Biden administration were among those targeted by China-linked hackers who were able to break into telecommunications company systems, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Times said State Department officials, Trump family members including Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, and prominent Democrats including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer were among those targeted by the spies. Concerns about the hacking group have grown since media reports disclosed its activities last month.