Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said that his personal email was targeted by a group of Chinese hackers as part of cyberattacks on 18 Canadian parliamentarians, disputing a statement from the Office of the Speaker of the House of Commons that the attacks were thwarted with “no cybersecurity impacts.”
“I have no idea how APT31 came to access my personal non-parliamentary account, because it is not publicly available.”
The two MPs raised concerns that while the FBI had informed their counterparts in allied countries about the attacks, the Canadian government did not relay this information to those affected.
‘Under Attack’
Addressing the MPs’ statement, a spokesperson for the Speaker’s office issued a media statement, saying that the House of Commons administration has completed an investigation into the case.“The House of Commons’ Administration investigates all incidents brought to its attention by security partners. In this case, it determined that the risk-mitigation measures in place had successfully prevented any attack,” wrote Mathieu Gravel, director of outreach and media relations.
“There were no cybersecurity impacts to any [Members of Parliament] or their communications.”
On May 1, Mr. Genuis raised the issue with House Speaker Greg Fergus, rejecting the statement from the Speaker’s office. He noted that even if the House of Commons administration had indeed prevented attacks targeting MPs’ official communication channels, it cannot claim success in thwarting all cybersecurity threats against parliamentarians.
“Moreover, your office is not at all able to say that these attacks were thwarted, because they evidently targeted members on both parliamentary and non-parliamentary emails,” Mr. Genuis said.
“House of Commons [information technology team], which is not an intelligence agency, clearly does not have eyes on cyberattacks against us through personal accounts and does not have the same responsibilities as the Government of Canada.”
Mr. Genuis highlighted the government’s responsibility to warn those affected by Chinese cyberattacks.
“Parliamentarians still need to know about targeted threats against them, even when those threats do not succeed. If someone tries to hurt me but their attempts are thwarted, I would still like to know I have been targeted in order to plan to protect myself going forward,” he said.
In response to The Epoch Times’ inquiry about Mr. Genuis’s concerns, the House Speaker’s Office provided the same statement as before and declined to comment further.