For Farshad Abasi, Russian cyberattacks against Canada are inevitable given Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to be an active participant in sanctioning Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. “They may already be happening and we don’t even know it,” said Abasi, chief security officer at Forward Security, a Vancouver-based cybersecurity company. “If they haven’t already, they will, and we need to be prepared.” Russia is home to the world’s most notorious cyber hacking groups, including Sandworm, a unit of Russia’s military intelligence organization that has a “history of inflicting digital chaos,” Wired magazine reported in February. Sandworm is believed to be behind the 2015 attack on Ukraine’s power grid, which resulted in power outages for 225,000 customers; the 2017 NotPetya malware attack that was targeted at Ukraine, but spread worldwide, paralyzing organizations including Danish shipping and logistics giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, or Maersk. Sandworm is also suspected to have interfered in the 2017 French presidential election and the 2018 Winter Olympics, in PyeongChang, South Korea.
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