Canadian Govt Websites Hacked | Another Embarrassment For Trudeau?

Canada Govt, Military Websites Hacked, Pro-Indian Hackers Claim Responsibility.

Canadian Govt Websites Hacked | Another Embarrassment For Trudeau?

With Canada-India relations worsening after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused New Delhi of involvement in the killing of six separatist leaders, hard Singh Nider, various Canadian government agencies have now reported cyber attacks from India. Calling these attacks new since Canada’s signals intelligence agency said various government institutions have been hit, even though systems serving Federal departments and agencies continue to operate normally. The Canadian Armed Forces website was among those impacted by the cyber networks for hours. According to the head of media relations of the Department of National Defense, Daniel Lee Boila, he said that the disruption began around noon and later rectified. Apart from a few desktop users, the site was inaccessible on most mobile devices.

The top official, however, said there were no broader implications of the brief hacking on their systems. However, a group called Indian Cyber Force has claimed to be responsible for this cyber attack. This comes after Trudeau gave a standing ovation to a Nazi in the House of Commons, forcing us to ask how a leader of a country works and operates.

Joining us to talk more about this is Ambassador Ask Sanar, a former diplomat. Also with us on the show is Advocate Kushbu Jen, a cybersecurity expert. Ambassador Sjar, I’ll begin with you, sir. We haven’t had a conversation about the fiasco that the Canadian government has created. First of all, sir, they have burnt their bridges; they have antagonized the country, which fully and in a variety of ways has supported them in the past. What do you think this fiasco is a result of? Is Justin Trudeau past his prime? He’s, of course, launched this slander against India without any corroboration or proof, and then, of course, he was caught red-handed parading a Nazi who killed Jews in Southern Russia and Germany as well.

Where this situation is going to land, and what kind of a relationship change should India be getting up for?

Yeah, thank you very much, Vinit, for having me on your show. You’re very right. I think this is a political, well, not only a former, it’s a political blunder of gigantic proportions that has been committed by Justin Trudeau. Because, you know, the expression that he’s been using right from the beginning is credible allegations, and this is really a contradiction in terms. Because if there are allegations, their credibility is highly suspect. You can have evidence, but he’s failed to provide any evidence. Canada and India are democracies, and we know how such criminal cases are investigated.

The political leadership never intervenes in such investigations; they let them have a free hand. Here we see that over the last three months, because Hardip Singh Ner was killed in June of 2023, there has not been a charge sheet filed, the investigations have not been completed, there have been no arrests, and the investigation is still going on. In the middle of all this, Justin Trudeau gets up and makes this absolutely baseless charge against the largest democracy in the world and a friendly country. We have had problems with Canada because of certain Canadian nationals who are terrorists and who are carrying on organized crime in the country.

They happen to have gone from India to that country, but now they have settled down there and they are citizens of Canada, asking for secessionism in India. No action has been taken against those people, although India has provided many dossiers. I think that is necessary to keep in mind when we are talking about the killing of the terrorist Hardip Singh Ner. We also need to keep in mind the activities of these people, their terrorist actions within India, and their hate crimes in Canada. They have been threatening the Indian High Commission there, the Indian consulates general, and the Indian High Commissioner, also with dire consequences because of their alleged role in the killing of Hardip Singh Ner. Still, no action has been taken.

There have been posters issued with the images of our High Commissioner and our general, but no action has been taken. I think both these aspects need to be taken in conjunction with each other. So the fact here is that Justin Trudeau has done a great disservice; he’s done a great disservice to his country, he’s done a great disservice to the people.

How do you think this fiasco affects his political future as well?

I think it affects it very badly because, you know, he seems to have done all this because of political compulsions. That is what India had stated when initially he made these allegations. Then the official spokesperson termed these as absurd and motivated, motivated basically due to his political compulsions because he’s dependent for his political survival as the leader of the lower house in the Canadian Parliament on the support from the National Democratic Party, which is led by Jmit Singh Dhaliwal, who is a Khalistani supporter and sympathizer.

He seems to have taken this stand that there is evidence, there is credible evidence, although Trudeau has been mentioning that there are credible allegations. Jmit Singh Dhaliwal says there is credible evidence. If there is evidence, they should take it to the police because, as far as India is concerned, we have not received any specific, any relevant information, as the External Affairs Minister mentioned two days ago in New York. Your question as to how it affects his political future, he is dependent for his survival upon the support of the NDP, which has 20 plus seats. Trudeau himself, his Liberal Party is short of the middle, the magic number by about 13 seats. As a result of all this, the faux pas that he’s been committing concerning India, and this accolades to the Nazi operative in the Second World War in Ukraine, I think his popularity is tanking very badly.

He finds himself in a very sticky spot, and it is high time that he tried to extricate himself, like he has apologized to his people for honoring the Nazi operative. I think he should also express an apology to India for leveling baseless charges and moving forward from there. Absolutely, sir. Major Mohammad Alisha, the defense expert, is also with us on the program. But before that, I’m going to take a reaction from Kbu Jan as well. Kbu, what do you make of this? India is not known for these cyber attacks. We are not really a country that operates like the MAD or the ISI or, for even that matter, like the Chinese. If we have a problem with a country, we raise it diplomatically. If you try to smear our reputation, we’ll try to have a response that perhaps may not be as proportionate to the insult and mortification that you have tried to bring in.

Where do you stand in this back-and-forth that is going on between Canada and India?

I absolutely agree with you on that, and there is no second thought to it. It’s too early a stage for anybody to pinpoint or bring in a country’s involvement in something like that. Understand that the security of a country, especially when we are living in the realm of the digital age, is very important, and such kinds of things can have large implications. But at the same time, there are ways to, as rightly said by the early panelist, there are ways how criminal law works or how things are. There has to be an investigation. Once the investigation is found, that’s where you can determine the involvement of a country in a cyber attack.

That itself is a complex process of attribution, with several legal parameters or criteria that have to be considered before making any statement or coming to a conclusion. But to create an uproar or to have to back the kind of stand you have taken in the past or to get that sympathy vote, I think politically, I’m not the right person to put in. But I don’t think so this is a political move one can have. It can have India as not an ally with the way India is the way it has been progressing and where we stand. We are not in that. I don’t think any country can afford a situation where they don’t have India as an ally or they make that an enemy state.

So, I think any word said at that level has to be looked upon and to come to the direction what exactly has happened today has happened. In this kind of scenario, there is available technical evidence, which is very crucial to understand as a cyber attack originated from just by blatantly somebody claiming that I’ve done it doesn’t solve the purpose. Criminal law doesn’t work like that. So in-depth technical evidence has to be there, and in-depth analysis has to be done where technical evidence is there that can attribute a cyber attack to a country. One second, you know, there are ways to do it. IP address geolocation tactics, techniques, and procedures that have been utilized in the attack method can give an insight into who exactly the attacker is. I’m not going on whether I can claim or not.

There can be 40 more people who can claim that we have done it and 40 more people who can claim that, you know, this is India, some India group. But even if it’s so, it’s an independent group. Even if it comes to the aspect that comes is linking whether it is backed by the state, India as a country has laws in place where we do not criminalize something called hacking. We do not provoke that part of it. We can go for international treaties available; you can have a discussion at the international level or the bureaucratic level.

If required, if some evidence comes in place, maybe the countries together can work and can help out. So it’s not just in the case of Canada, but other places also, I think India would be open to helping out in any manner if something some investigation or some aspect is required. Whereas pinpointing or helping out in understanding the criminal activities happening in the world, but to attribute something that directly, I think it’s too premature. And if I have to put it, it’s kiddish. Mad Alisha.

Why is Canada fishing in waters where it doesn’t understand the nature or the depth of the water?

Even Justin, by Canadian standards, has done a very, very poor job when it comes to safety and security in that country, when it comes to employment in Canada, when it comes to students finding jobs after completing their studies, taking loans from India from Indian banks and studying in Canada, and not being able to find jobs in Canada. He’s being accused by his own party of running the Liberal Party into the ground. Just when it was time for him to perhaps recalibrate the whole thing, he went about attacking India without any proof. It’s understandable what happened to him at the G20 Summit could have made him feel a little lesser than what he already felt. But the fact of the matter is that there is a prime minister whose foolishness and mistakes are very much palpable and are very much likely to land him, like Ambassador Jar also said, in political oblivion. We definitely see this; what happens when you actually inherit something, when it is like a family business. Politics has become a family business, unfortunately for a lot of people. It’s like ‘bab da.’ Without understanding, well, either it is total ignorance, you don’t understand, or you understand very well, but you are smart enough to know which side of the bread to butter, in the sense, where your votes are coming from, they’re coming from a person, they’re coming from people who support the Pakistan movement. So you will keep your mouth shut; you will not say anything against them.

You keep quiet thinking that you’ll get the support, but that is the other way around. It’ll work adversely. Justin’s popularity has fallen. In fact, his aide, who he might have superseded, him on the other hand, the conservatives, the Conservative Party is expected to win the next elections. So that’s exactly what happens thereafter. Just like a master said the way he apologized to the nation for honoring a Nazi hero or Nazi veteran and he did not know. To see that’s what he did not know. This shows pure ignorance, and they say ignorance is bliss.

So that’s again, I think Justin Tro, uh, thinks ignorance is bliss. So now, the very fact is one more thing a point to observe over here reads the Sikhs in Canada. They did not land up for the support of the Khalistan movement recently. Hardly a minuscule of them landed up there, which means that they hardly have any support in India. Zero, I would say. I would call it zero because the Indian Sea is very patriotic. Well, they can only do this kind of activity outside the soil of India, sitting far away in Canada with a Canadian passport because they feel they would be protected by Justin Trudeau over there. But Justin Trudeau is causing more damage and more harm to his country. They are being shortsighted; he’s seeing, okay, my limited time on the seat, how it’s going to go. What he’s not seeing is the long run of the country.

India and Canada were such good friends; we are still not at war with Canada; we are very good friends. I hope it remains that we are, I hope we become very good friends again, but it has definitely affected the relationship because the moment you ally something without any proof, even a child when he has to make an accusation against you, I mean, he has to surface proof anywhere. There’s proof required. Abdullah has spoken about it also; he said, okay, there have been so many people. But you know what Ali, what really worries me, Ambassador SJ, what really worries me at this point in time is the Indian diaspora that’s there in Canada. If there is going to be such ill will between our nations, it’s the people, it’s the Indian people throughout Canada who are going to be at the receiving end of this disparity, of this unwillingness to cooperate between these two countries.

Ambassador Jar, you’re very right, when you say this. I think it works at two levels, as I can see. One is in terms of what was mentioned that there is this very minuscule proportion, as Major Muhammad Al sha he just now mentioned, there is a very minuscule proportion of the Indian Sikh diaspora community that is in favor of Khalistan. 99% plus would have nothing to do with this, not in Canada and definitely not in India. In India, there’s no traction at all for this. The sort of comments and statements that are being made by some of them and the sort of posters that I referred to that are being issued, that are being published by them, and also the statements by people like Guru Pathway Singh Pain who has a double citizenship, both of the United States and of Canada, and he is issuing these video threats that Canadian Hindus should leave Canada; they should go back to India, etc.

I think this is, number one, making the members of the Indian diaspora very uncomfortable. The second part is that by making a statement like this, V in the parliament has given greater courage and greater support to the separatists. Many of these people, those who are fighting for secession from India, they are saying that we feel vindicated. They feel victorious that the prime minister of the country also thinks like this. That will further embolden them to carry out their nefarious activities, hate crime activities, etc. The third aspect is, of course, as far as the government is concerned, you know, the Indian government, because of the threats that are faced by our high commission personnel, whether it is the threats to the high commissioner, to the council general. Obviously, they can’t perform their duties as they were doing earlier, so the visa services to people holding Canadian passports have been stopped temporarily, and of course, they will be under constant review.

But that is going to cause hardship to the people there. The last point is the students who are going from here and mind you, there are a large number of students. I think over 300,000 Indian students are in Canada, and they bring a lot of foreign exchange to Canada, Canada’s economy is not doing well at all because of all the challenges of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic. The after-effects of which are still being felt. So as a result of that, you know, if the number of students going to Canada comes down, it’s going to have a very serious impact on the economy of Canada. I’m told about 47% of the student community in Canada is from India. So that is going to be having an effect. And lastly, there might be, as far as the issuance of visas from India for Indian students going to Canada, that also might get delayed. So I think the diaspora has this problem, has this huge challenge, and it would be in the interest of both the countries that the issue is sorted out.

Before I let you go, we’ve also run out of time. You know, in your long experience as a diplomat, have you ever seen an instance where one government accused the other government in their parliament through their elected leader without proof and created so much hoopla?

No, never. Never. And you know, this has all been done without any due diligence. Without it, I think this is highly irresponsible, that is the most moderate term that I can use for what Mr. Trudeau has done. And politically very immature and politically very juvenile sort of an act because, as I mentioned, without the investigation having been completed, he has come out and literally shot himself in the foot. He has thrown the India-Canada relations really to the dogs, and we have to work overtime to salvage them and to revive them. And as I said, he’s done an enormous disservice to Canada, to India, two democracies, relations between two democracies, which is a great pity.

Similar Posts

• Canada Govt, Military Websites Hacked | Pro-Indian Hacker Claim Responsibility