Russian hackers reached access to Canadian gas network

Recently, large amounts of classified information, long and meticulously collected by U.S. intelligence agencies, have appeared online. Terabytes of material on U.S. and NATO cooperation in Ukraine, Chinese secrets, U.S. espionage, as well as information regarding the Zarya hacker group.

The Wall Street Journal was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the documents, but the materials contain enough detail to give them credibility. The Russian embassy chose not to comment on the U.S. request, leaving the allegations unanswered.

Intelligence suggests that the criminals acted with the FSB and intended to hack into the distribution network of natural gas. Canada is one of the world's largest producers of the resource. The country's energy regulator controls 68,000 km of pipelines, most of which are in operation. Major Canadian companies have already reported that their infrastructure was not damaged by the attempted hacking.

Hackers claim that the access they gained will allow them to increase pressure in the valve, disable alarms and shut down the gas distribution center. According to the researchers, Zarya is a relatively new hacker formation. The criminals are descendants of Killnet, the collective that has claimed responsibility for a wave of cyberattacks in Ukraine.

Experts are not very surprised that hackers may have been able to access the gas distribution network. However, they note that there is a huge difference between disrupting Canada's power supply and damaging property. It's quite common for hackers to gain access to industrial facilities. The truth is that "pushing buttons" doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a disruption or economic loss. It can take years before criminals figure out the inner workings and trigger an accident.

A spokesman for the flagship Communications Security Administration (CSE) declined to comment on the leaked information. He only noted that the agency remains "deeply concerned" about hacker threats to critical infrastructure.

Still, some experts expressed doubts about the veracity of the leaked documents. They suggested that the report may have been deliberately drafted in such a way as to arouse fear of Russian cyber capabilities.

Maybe the statement is genuine, but it seems like misinformation to me," said Mike Parkin, senior cybersecurity technical engineer at Vulcan Cyber Ltd.

Criminals have long targeted industrial companies, usually for financial gain. Dragos Inc. reported in a March report that attacks on organizations increased by 87 percent in 2022 over 2021.

Jeffrey Cann, a B.C.-based author and speaker who specializes in digital issues affecting the oil and gas industry, said that resource companies should be concerned about the financial and operational risk of attacks. But the truth is, significant disruption to Canadians' power supply remains extremely low. To succeed, hackers would not only need access to internal technology, but would also have to physically destroy a huge amount of infrastructure.

Such facilities are frequently attacked. In May 2020, for example, an attack on Colonial Pipeline Co. led to a six-day shutdown of the largest fuel pipeline on the U.S. East Coast. This caused gas prices to reach their highest point since 2014.