Hackers didn’t gain access to Senate information in 2021 incident: officials

By Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press on September 24, 2024.

A federal inquiry into foreign interference is slated to hear today from parliamentary security officials including House of Commons sergeant-at-arms Patrick McDonell. McDonell carries the mace out of the House of Commons Chamber after the house rises, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, Dec. 13, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

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.

The officials say 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.

Senate officials described the chain of events in an interview earlier this month with a federal inquiry into foreign interference, and a summary of the conversation was presented today during inquiry hearings.

The officials say 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.

At the time, the directorate was not aware the attack might have been conducted by Chinese hackers.

In any event, they say, knowing the source of the attack earlier would not have changed the directorate’s prompt response.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 24, 2024.