Canada emergency alert system not compromised by cyber-attack on operating company

By David Zura

Alert Ready, Canada’s emergency alerting system, appears not to have been compromised following a cyber-attack affecting Pelmorex operations earlier this week.

The program delivers critical and potentially life-saving alerts to Canadians through television, radio and LTE-connected and compatible wireless devices.

Pelmorex, the company the operates the system, as well as broadcaster The Weather Network, said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it was affected by a cybersecurity incident Tuesday morning that took down some of its data systems.

The company also said that the incident was connected to a third-party software provider.

Daniel Tsai, a lecturer with the University of Toronto specializing in business ethics and consumer rights, said these kinds of hacks can cause a lot of damage.

“This is endemic. Hospitals, schools, healthcare systems, utility systems,” said Tsai. “Vital emergency systems have been hacked, and a lot of them have sleepers, hacks that have occurred where there’s backdoor access. And at any time, some nefarious foreign entity or hacker can take over and cause a lot of damage. And, in some cases, these companies, these organizations and public institutions aren’t even aware.

In a written statement to CityNews, the company said, “Alert Ready capabilities are not impacted and continue to work as intended.”

Meanwhile, Tsai warns of an ongoing arms race between hackers and everybody else, driving up the cost of operations as businesses, institutions and governments have to keep coming up with ways to protect both their own data and that of consumers.

“The more sophisticated the encryption and security tools get; the more sophisticated hackers get. Because, at the end of the day, it all comes down to getting your personal data and money.”

In the most recent update from Pelmorex, the company describes an improvement over the last couple of days with services increasingly being restored.

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