A police officer gestures at the photographer as security staff stand guard outside the Canadian embassy in Beijing, China on Dec. 20, 2018.
Canada has joined major allies including the United States and Britain in identifying China as the country responsible for a state-sponsored hacking campaign to steal data from military service members, government agencies and private companies in the United States and nearly a dozen other countries.
Canada’s statement from the Communications Security Establishment was not as strong as the disapproval registered by some allies. The Americans called it “outright cheating and theft,” the British said China must stop what it called “the most significant and widespread cyber intrusions against the U.K. and allies uncovered to date” and the Australians expressed “serious concern” about Beijing’s “intellectual property theft.”
The Communications Security Establishment, for its part, merely named China as responsible, saying that it is “almost certain that actors likely associated with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ministry of State Security (MSS) are responsible for the compromise … beginning as early as 2016.”
The international censure of China comes amid increasing diplomatic tension with Canada over potential Chinese state influence in this country’s networks. Ottawa has been weighing whether to allow China’s flagship tech company, Huawei Technologies, to supply gear for next-generation 5G mobile networks. Chinese law requires companies in China to “support, co-operate with and collaborate in national intelligence work” as requested by Beijing. Three of Canada’s closest military and intelligence allies – the United States, Australia and New Zealand – have already barred Huawei from these future networks for national security reasons.
U.S. officials in Washington on Thursday accused two Chinese citizens acting on behalf of China’s main intelligence agency of leading the hacking operation. The two Chinese citizens in this global hacking campaign are accused of breaching computer networks in a broad swath of industries, including aviation and space, banking and finance, oil and gas exploration and pharmaceutical technology. U.S. prosecutors say they also compromised the names, Social Security numbers and other personal information of more than 100,000 U.S. Navy workers.