MP Genuis Says Chinese Hackers Targeted His Personal Email, Rejects ‘No Cybersecurity Impacts’ Claim From House Speaker’s Office

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said that his personal email was targeted by a group of Chinese hackers as part of cyberattacks on 18 Canadian parliamentarians. He disputed a statement from the Office of the Speaker of the House of Commons that the attacks were thwarted with “no cybersecurity impacts.”

“The cyber-attack against me from APT31 did not target my parliamentary email account. While in many cases parliamentary accounts were targeted, in my case the cyberattack targeted my personal non-parliamentary account,” he said in the House of Commons on May 1.

“I have no idea how APT31 came to access my personal non-parliamentary account, because it is not publicly available.”

APT31, also known as the Advanced Persistent Threat 31, is a group of hackers backed by a spy agency of the Chinese regime. In a recently unsealed indictment, U.S. authorities charged seven hackers involved with the group, stating that they have spent 14 years targeting a wide array of political and business figures, as well as critics of the Beijing regime. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information about the seven Chinese hackers who are believed to reside in China.

Nayeli Sosa, a spokesperson for Canada’s Communications Security Establishment, confirmed that APT31 had also targeted Canada, as reported by CBC News on March 26. Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc also addressed the matter during a press conference in Halifax on the same day, stating that Canada is “aware of the threat of cyberattacks.”

The Chinese hackers targeted members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), an international group of cross-party legislators dedicated to reshaping democratic countries’ approach to Beijing. Mr. Genuis and Liberal MP John McKay, both co-chairs of IPAC, said in an April 29 statement that APT31 had targeted 18 Canadian MPs and senators.

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The two MPs raised concerns that while the FBI had informed their counterparts in allied countries about the attacks, the Canadian government did not relay this information to those affected.

“The House of Commons’ Administration investigates all incidents brought to its attention by security partners. In this case, it determined that the risk-mitigation measures in place had successfully prevented any attack,” wrote Mathieu Gravel, director of outreach and media relations.

“There were no cybersecurity impacts to any [Members of Parliament] or their communications.”

On May 1, Mr. Genuis raised the issue with House Speaker Greg Fergus, rejecting the statement from the speaker’s office. He noted that even if the House of Commons administration had indeed prevented attacks targeting MPs’ official communication channels, it cannot claim success in thwarting all cybersecurity threats against parliamentarians.

“Moreover, your office is not at all able to say that these attacks were thwarted, because they evidently targeted members on both parliamentary and non-parliamentary emails,” Mr. Genuis said.

“House of Commons [information technology team], which is not an intelligence agency, clearly does not have eyes on cyber-attacks against us through personal accounts and does not have the same responsibilities as the Government of Canada.”

Mr. Genuis highlighted the government’s responsibility to warn those affected by Chinese cyberattacks.

“Parliamentarians still need to know about targeted threats against them, even when those threats do not succeed. If someone tries to hurt me but their attempts are thwarted, I would still like to know I have been targeted in order to plan to protect myself going forward,” he said.

In response to The Epoch Times’ inquiry about Mr. Genuis’s concerns, the House Speaker’s Office provided the same statement as before and declined to comment further.

Noé Chartier contributed to this report.