MPs targeted by Chinese hackers question why Canada didn't tell them

Members of Parliament are questioning why Canadian security officials did not inform them that they had been the target of Beijing-linked hackers, after learning from the FBI that the international parliamentary alliance they are a part of was in the crosshairs of the Chinese cyberattack in 2021.

Members of Parliament are questioning why Canadian security officials did not inform them that they had been the target of Beijing-linked hackers, after learning from the FBI that the international parliamentary alliance they are a part of was in the crosshairs of the Chinese cyberattack in 2021.

On Monday, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis kicked off the House of Commons sitting by raising a question of privilege, sounding alarm over what he considered an "unacceptable" failure on the part of the Canadian government to inform parliamentarians that a foreign government had targeted them.

Genuis said that that last week, as first reported by The Globe and Mail, he and fellow Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) Canadian co-chair Liberal MP John MacKay were informed "about a cyberattack launched against us, and 16 other Canadian parliamentarians, in 2021." 

IPAC is an international cross-party group of legislators "working towards reform on how democratic countries approach China." It comprises politicians from a range of political parties, and has become, as Genuis put it, "a unique target" of the Chinese Communist Party.

According to Genuis, IPAC learned about the "co-ordinated attack" on the email accounts of IPAC-affiliated legislators through an unsealed U.S. Department of Justice indictment in March.

The indictment said that the People's Republic of China's state-backed hacking group, nicknamed "Advanced Persistent Threat 31" or "APT31," had "sent malicious tracking-link emails to government officials across the world who expressed criticism of the PRC government." 

Based on follow-up done by IPAC, Genuis said, they were told that U.S. intelligence officials with the FBI were prevented from informing legislators from other countries of the targeting, but had issued foreign dissemination requests to every government with impacted political figures in 2022.