Canada appears to have avoided cyberattack

Canada is not immune to online extortion, despite apparently sidestepping a massive attack that temporarily crippled networks around the world, a cybersecurity expert said.

Atty Mashatan, a professor at Ryerson University’s School of Information Technology Management, said it was a fluke that Canada appears to have been spared from Friday’s ransomware attack that disrupted services in countries worldwide, including the U.S.

Attacks like this one, dubbed “WannaCry” for the “WannaCrypt” technology used to execute it, happen when a type of software seizes control of a computer, encrypting its contents and rendering them inaccessible.

“The vehicle that the malware going from one device to the other is spam. The most common way that they do that is via a link in an email,” Mashatan said. “It looks as if it’s from someone you know, in your contacts. You click on it, and bingo. The actual malware, the file, is downloaded.”

The perpetrators then demand hundreds or thousands of dollars to unlock the victims’ computers — essentially holding the documents, photos and other items on the computer for ransom.

“This time around we were lucky,” she said.

A representative from Public Safety Canada said the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre is aware of the reported attacks, but made no mention on whether any Canadian users were affected.

The Communications Security Establishment, a Canadian intelligence agency, said in a statement Saturday that the federal government’s computer networks do not appear to have been affected by the attack.