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Canadian Government Blocks Employees from Accessing the Net

The Treasury Board of Canada, during early February 2011, blocked employees from accessing the Net due to threats that weren't specified. The Board's online site states that its responsibilities include ethics and accountability, comptrollership, endorsing regulations along with the majority of Orders-in-Council, and administrative management. IeeeSpectrum published this in news on February 21, 2011.

Apparently, the blockage was done when hackers effectively infiltrated the Treasury Board and the Finance Department of Canada via servers located within China during January 2011. The attack it's reported was of typical spear-phishing type. InformationWeek published this in news on February 20, 2011.

Actually, when on February 17, 2011, Stockwell Day President of Treasury Board acknowledged that the Government of Canada had found that hackers during early January 2011, targeted the Department of Finance and the Treasury Board, a ban was decidedly imposed on the use of the Internet. IeeeSpectrum reported this.

Day stated that he wouldn't describe the attack as most aggressive; however, it was serious enough as the hackers had been after financial databases. All signs currently indicated that the government's sensors as well as its online-protection mechanisms received the warnings on time as also that the channels for the databases were proactively shutdown, he added. NewsFactor.com published this in news on February 21, 2011.

State the specialists on computer safety that the attack quite resembled the Aurora spear-phishing assaults on Google as well as several other high-profile organizations across the USA. The hackers apparently acquired admission into the system while posing as federal executives after which they contacted employees in charge of technicalities who unwittingly gave away the password to sensitive computer systems. InformationWeek published this.

Meanwhile, Senior Analyst at Info-Tech Research Group Ltd. based in London, Ont., acquiesced that it would be good to have a centralized system for online security; however, he thought that mechanisms of multi-factor authentication might be the most effectual way out. He added that while robust consumer awareness could aid in preventing most attacks, companies were merely strong in just the way as their most fragile link. Itbusiness.ca published this in news on February 22, 2011.

Related article: Canadian Retailer Faces Security Breach of Customer Credit Numbers

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