Canadian Cyber News Rewire - 25/07/26
Wiring you into the cyber news relevant to Canada the week ending July 25
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Canadian Cyber in Context Updates
The Canadian Cyber News Rewire is a survey of Canadian cyber and adjacent news stories from this past week (or recently). Questions or business inquiries: info[@]cyberincontext.ca
In May, I was on a panel discussing the role of digital sovereignty and the security of critical infrastructure in Canada and NATO. You can watch the full panel here (CPAC).
Canadian News
Powering our future: inside the ecosystem preparing Canadians to lead the world in AI (Bell)
A blog from Bell outlining their plan to build infrastructure to support AI.
As I had predicted, CAF Cyber Forces participated in RIMPAC. “More than 30 cyber specialists from six nations gathered at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for advanced cyber warfare training during Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2026, the world’s largest international maritime exercise. Participants from Canada, Australia, the United States, Germany, the Philippines, and the Republic of Korea worked together in a Persistent Cyber Training Environment to enhance multinational cooperation and cyber readiness.”
In New Brunswick, residents battle the government over a planned AI data centre (The Narwhal)
Another in the many stories across Canada of communities actively resisting the construction of data centres.
Think Tank: Case Study: Canada’s Quantum Advantage (Canadian Shield Institute)
Good article on Canada’s relative quantum advantage. Canada competes with major powers in quantum research and is doing fairly well to keep pace, but as more money is injected into the ecosystem, Canada will have a more difficult time keeping up.
OpenAI models go rogue, hack startup’s system during testing (The Globe and Mail)
Canadian coverage of Open AI incident. It is important to note that it is not the model that went rogue, it did exactly what it was meant to do. This is OpenAI’s failure to establish a true sandbox. This is OpenAI’s governance failures, and this is part of a media campaign to spin their failure to conduct proper oversight and governance of such models and tests.
Government of Canada launches public consultation on AI transparency (Government of Canada)
The federal government launched a public consultation to gather views on strengthening transparency for AI systems and AI-generated outputs.
They Don’t Need a Warrant for What They Can Buy - Part 1 (Devious Plan Blog)
First piece in a series about how our concerns about digital sovereignty don’t end at the border. Law enforcement is increasingly buying advertising and other available data for purchase about citizens that they would normally need a warrant to obtain. This is most common in the US where Canadian data is often warpped up with US data.
Minister Anand advances Canada’s relations with ASEAN members (Government of Canada)
“At the ARF Ministerial, Minister Anand announced that Canada will extend its co-chairship of the ARF Inter-Sessional Meeting on Security of and in the Use of Information Communication Technologies, alongside India and Indonesia, to advance practical collaboration on evolving cyber threats.” This also includes a big focus on combating scams and fraud.
Canada has been massively pushing for cyber cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.
Canada Presses US for More Collaboration to Combat Cyber Scams (Bloomberg)
“Canada is pushing the US for deeper collaboration to dismantle industrial-scale cyber crime operations, framing joint action as imperative to tackling a growing illegal enterprise siphoning billions of dollars from North Americans.”
I wouldn’t normally post something like this here, except that cyber, cybersecurity, signals, and the digital backbone to uncrewed systems is a big concern for this initiative.
Includes millions of contribution to Quantum firms QOrsa Corporations, Quantum Valley Ideas Laboratories, semiconductor manufacturer VueReal, and more.
‘Frustrated and stressed’: Thousands impacted by cyber attack at Calgary university (CBC News)
Ongoing coverage of the Mount Royal University ransomware attack. Security experts indicate that the ransomware group responsible removed the university’s data from its auction site, which may indicate that Mount Royal University paid the ransom.
Job Opening: Canadians for Digital Sovereignty is looking for a Coalition Director (C4DS)
Canadians for Digital Sovereignty (C4DS) is looking for its “inaugural Coalition Director for a full-time, remote and extensible six-month term. Reporting to the Board Executive, the Director will transform C4DS from an emerging national coalition into a credible, effective, and influential voice on Canada’s digital sovereignty.”
Alberta electricity industry expects tripling of power prices from data centres (National Observer)
By and large, Canada has relatively low electricity costs, but this may change with the rush to build data centres and a lack of equal action to scale electricity production.
Canadian government urged to block Thomson Reuters data deal with US ICE (The Guardian)
Leader of the federal NDP Avi Lewis is calling on the Carney government to block the deal between Thomson Reuters and ICE. Unlikely to occur based on how the Carney government has been approaching things.
Canadian Events
BSides Ottawa folk are fantastic people; highly recommend any event they put on.
Ottawa - October 17 - OWASP Ottawa Day 2026 (Google Forms)
The Ottawa chapter of the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) has opened their call for papers for their OWASP Ottawa Day.
I was invited to submit and present, so I hope to see some of you in October!
INCYBER is quickly becoming one of the go to conferences for cyber in Canada.
Parliamentary News & Upcoming Meetings
This section includes any House of Commons and Senate meetings that are relevant to Canadian cyber.
Parliament has begun its Summer break and will resume sitting on September 21.
Canada-Relevant News
As many issues don’t respect borders, this section is for stories that impact Canada, but may not be Canadian-sourced or focused, to differentiate from the previous section, which is 100% focused on Canada.
OpenAI says Hugging Face was breached by its pre-release models (TechCrunch)
Despite how OpenAI frames this, this is a massive failure on OpenAI and indicates that they cannot be trusted. This is poor governance and containment on their part. This is not a “wow, AI is amazing,” moment; this is an OpenAI governance failure to establish proper safety procedures and an attempt to spin their failure.
OpenAI’s agent didn’t go rogue. Its governance did. (Binding Hook)
Hugging Face CEO calls for ‘radical transparency’ after ‘unprecedented’ OpenAI hack (TechCrunch)
A Sneaky Hacking Tool Targeting AI Infrastructure Is Lurking in Victims’ Blind Spots (Wired)
Supply chain attacks are the norm and have to be incorporated into one’s threat modelling.
Marco Rubio tells diplomats to play down talk of American tech ‘kill switch’ (Reuters)
This is an expansion on downloading digital sovereignty concerns by others, but this was worsened by the Anthropic export controls. The United States opened Pandora’s box, and they can no longer fix it. No one can trust the United States anymore.
Persistent plagiarism and theft machine has been confirmed to be a machine for plagiarism and theft.
If you pay a hacker’s ransom, chances are that they’ll come back for more (TechCrunch)
Coverage of a new report by Proofpoint (Proofpoint) that confirms with data what we have long said, which is that the other 1/3 of companies that paid a ransom were hit with a second extortion attempt. I have heard mixed reviews of this report and the methodology and numbers they present. While maybe not broadly statistically sound, it does indicate a trend.
LG Monitors Fill PCs With Adware, and It’s Not Just Recent Displays (Gizmodo)
LG Monitors were found to install malicious adware on people’s computers.
“A widespread DNS poisoning campaign is targeting the hotels, conference venues and the hospitality sector with credential harvesting attacks designed to steal corporate login credentials from visitors, researchers have warned.”
US and allies say Russian hackers stole emails without social engineering (Reuters)
CSE/Canadian Centre for Cyber Security joined this announcement. “Russian hackers stole emails from users of the Zimbra email program without having to fool them into opening an attachment or clicking a link.”
It is believed this is the first time someone has been charged for this and nothing else. Based on preliminary information, it does not sound like this will stick at all.
Another device coded with little effort that compromises an entire system.
Canadian Cyber Threat Intelligence
Any relevant cyber threat intelligence to Canada will be posted here. I only list the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security’s (CCCS) alerts here, not all advisories; follow the full feed here.
What is voice phishing (vishing)? - ITSAP.00.102 (Canadian Centre for Cyber Security)
Social engineering – ITSAP.00.166 (Canadian Centre for Cyber Security)
Attackers pummel critical WordPress vuln to create all sorts of mischief (The Register)
Introducing selfie for sign-in: a new, easy way to access your Google Account.
Putting this in threat intelligence because I can only imagine this going bad.
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United States News
Lawmakers get taste of AI-enabled cyberattacks in China-Taiwan war game (NextGov)
“Members and staffers from the House Homeland Security Committee and the House China Select Committee were put through a simulated Taiwan crisis Tuesday that tested how U.S. officials might respond to AI-backed cyberattacks targeting transportation and logistics networks needed to deploy American forces.”
Trump orders defense supply chain review to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers (SeekingAlpha) [H/t Catalin Cimpanu]
US President Trump signs executive order that will impact critical supply chains, including software. [WhiteHouse Statement]
“Since July 2025, the Russian state-supported advanced persistent threat group known as LAUNDRY BEAR has utilized phishing emails to target the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) across various U.S. and allied government and commercial networks.”
Cybersecurity Regulations: Multiple Sectors Are Subject to Potentially Duplicative Reporting Requirements (US Government Accountability Office) [H/t Catalin Cimpanu)
“We found that 80 of the 117 [cybersecurity] regulations we identified (about 70%) had the same kind of reporting requirement as another regulation. For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission requires publicly traded companies across different sectors to provide cybersecurity plans. However, this may duplicate or conflict with similar requirements in other regulations.”
Nothing quite new, we know they’re targeting this infrastructure, but good reminder and ongoing coverage.
United Kingdom and European Union News
Huawei ban to cost the EU up to €40 billion, says industry (Politico)
The EU has been a bit slower to resist/ban Huawei equipment than the United States and Canada, so it has a larger footprint to deal with, which drives up costs.
France passes law banning under-15s from social media (BBC News)
In 2022, France found that this would be impossible to do without massively increasing surveillance and reducing individual privacy.
UK and partners expose Russian state-supported actors for new ‘zero-click’ phishing campaign targeting Western organisations [H/t Catalin Cimpanu]
Canada is amongst the partners supporting these efforts.
EU fines Google €890 million for anti-competitive practices (Le Monde)
“The EU fined the US giant €460 million for illegally favouring the company’s own services – for example, Google Flights or Google Hotels – over rivals in search results. The second fine worth €430 million was because Google did not allow app developers to show consumers offers, free of charge, outside of its Google Play store, the European Commission said in a statement.”
Article notes that this is likely to increase tensions between the EU and the US (Trump), but accountability is needed for when companies break the law. Leniency and low punishments for corporations which persistently break the law become part of their business model and don’t fix anything.
Building cyber resilience in the UK one step at a time
“The Ministry of Defence have asked all industry partners to achieve Level 0 of the Defence Cyber Certification (DCC) by 31st December 2026, which includes a requirement for obtaining Cyber Essentials for all applicable business-critical systems within scope.”
Other International News
Kenya probes hack of president’s website after bitcoin ransom demand (The Record)
Ongoing coverage of Kenya’s president website being attacked.
Korean diplomatic academy’s training platform was hacked for nearly 10 months — and no one knew
Has the hallmarks of China, but current information is unclear if an attacker has been identified.
“The attack, targeting Thailand's Ministry of Finance (MOF) was largely driven by Hermes, an autonomous AI agent using "YOLO" mode.”
North Korea busts elite hacking ring inside its own banks (Daily NK)
North Korea is heavily investing in building a cyber force, but this will likely have unintended consequences.
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Media of the Week
Now apply this to AI.