OTTAWA — Senate officials say they were told in January 2021 about phishing emails targeting parliamentary accounts — attacks that were later attributed to hackers acting on behalf of Beijing.
Some of the emails made it through firewalls and landed in senators' email inboxes, but no one opened the messages and the attackers did not gain access to information on Senate servers, the officials say.
They described the chain of events in an interview earlier this month with a federal commission of inquiry into foreign interference. A summary of the conversation was presented Tuesday during inquiry hearings.
The officials said senators' offices were immediately contacted to ensure any emails were destroyed, and the upper chamber's information services directorate did a search of the Senate database to check that emails were deleted.
It emerged earlier this year that some MPs and senators faced cyberattacks from the hackers because of their involvement with the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which pushes for accountability from Beijing.
In early 2021, the Senate's information services directorate was not aware the attack might have been conducted by Chinese hackers.
In any event, the Senate officials told the commission, knowing the source of the attack earlier would not have changed the directorate's prompt response.
"We treat all these threats seriously, and we act quickly," David Vatcher, director of Senate information services, testified at the inquiry Tuesday.
Vatcher said the number of attacks linked to foreign states is increasing but represent a minority of the overall attacks the upper chamber faces.
However, Vatcher said, the "geopolitical climate is very tense, and it would be crazy to think that these attacks are not going to continue increasing in number and in level of sophistication."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 24, 2024.
Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press
