B.C.’s public safety minister says a series of cyberattacks on government systems conducted at the behest of a foreign state in recent months may have hit 22 email boxes containing sensitive information about 19 people.
While saying little about the origins or motivations behind the attack, Mike Farnworth held a brief news conference Monday to detail the latest findings from investigations into the incidents.
“At this time, we have no indication that the general public’s information was accessed,” Farnworth told reporters.
“We have not identified any misuse of this information or found evidence that the actor accessed specific files.”
‘These were employee files’
Monday’s statement was the latest in a slow drip of information that has emerged since the B.C. government first began investigating an attempted breach of its systems on April 10.
The incident was reported to the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, which supports government as part of the Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s national cryptological agency.
In the month that followed, the province says two more attempts were made to hit government systems, resulting in an order for public service workers to change their passwords.
B.C.’s premier went public with news of the attack after the Centre for Cyber Security said safeguards had been put in place that would allow the public to be notified.
Farnworth would not say which ministry the email boxes were attached to, but said no cabinet members were affected.
“These were employee files. And with one exception being an employee who had family on their inbox,” he said.
“All the individuals have been notified and will be receiving credit monitoring and identity protection supports.”
‘A reality of governing today’
The government has previously said the level of sophistication involved in the attacks led investigators to conclude they were either carried out directly by a state actor or by an entity supported by a foreign state.
But there has been no indication of what country might be targeting British Columbia — or why.
Farnworth said the province takes the issue of cybersecurity very seriously, employing 76 people in the Ministry of Citizens Services whose sole focus is ensuring the integrity of government information systems, as well as technical staff within all other ministries.
But the fact remains that citizens are increasingly pushed online as they conduct personal and business interactions with government.
“What it comes down to is ensuring that our systems are as robust and up to date as possible. It means making the necessary investments to ensure that. It means ensuring you’ve got the people not only within government specifically but within individual ministries,” Farnworth said.
“It is a reality of governing today that you have to have those kinds of resources.”