Ottawa’s ‘secret network’ in question following alleged hack

Ottawa’s ‘secret network’ in question following alleged hack:

OTTAWA — The integrity of a federal “secret network” launched last year at a cost of millions to taxpayers is in question following an alleged hack this week that resulted in highly sensitive information becoming public.

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It is possible, of course, to maintain the integrity of a network regardless of the number of people authorized for access, said Christopher Parsons, a fellow with the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs.

It’s just difficult, he said.

“The goal with these secured networks is to keep classified material in the classified space,” Parsons said in an interview. “If that firewall is maintained between classified and unclassified material, the number of people doesn’t immediately cause a problem.”

The potential for problems arises, however, when a weak link presents itself —and the more people brought in, the higher the chance a weak link will show up, Parsons explained, speaking broadly of classification and secure-network issues.

“It’s just the fact of the matter that the more people you have on any of these networks, the higher the chance someone accidentally moves a document where they weren’t supposed to, or intentionally moves a document somewhere they weren’t supposed to, or, in a worst case scenario, there’s an insider threat,” he said.

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Based on the bit of information available at this point on this week’s incident, which comes mostly from Anonymous, it’s difficult to say whether the document was made available through a leak or a hack, Parsons said before offering five hypotheses making their way around:

The first is that some individuals found a way to remove redactions on a previously released document. Secondly, it’s feasible someone within Treasury Board accidentally shared the file through a program, innocuously moving it from the classified to unclassified network. The third possibility is similar, only the move from a secure to un-secure environment was intentional.

Another option still is that an employee’s laptop or device was infected with malware.

“Or, it could be, legitimately, the individuals calling themselves Anonymous this time successfully penetrated some element of the Treasury Board’s network,” Parsons said.

“Some of the government’s Crown Jewels lie in the Treasury Board’s networks. Having unauthorized parties within them would be a serious breach of not just cyber security, but national security … If one party is doing it, there’s no reason to think another party, like a foreign government isn’t doing the same thing.”