Business Brief: Hacking the Canadian economy - The Globe and Mail

An Israeli advertising agency has been serving millions of online adverts that allow “zero-click” spyware to be used against targets, researchers at a Canadian university have said. Citizen Lab, a digital investigations research unit at the University of Toronto, said it believed dozens of devices at the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera had been compromised by spyware delivered through ads run by Discover-Tech, which describes itself as a specialised digital advertising agency. According to Citizen Lab, Discover-Tech operates a software platform called Controlium that allows its clients to “mass-profile and deanonymise” internet users then covertly hack targets with third-party spyware. Unlike infections that rely on people interacting with links or files, the spyware requires no interaction from the victim to be installed, making it a new delivery technique, Citizen Lab says. The infections happen without a user’s knowledge, and in a matter of seconds, according to Citizen Lab. “[The online advertising] ecosystem is being weaponised at a massive scale to profile millions of users, then silently infect targets with zero-click mercenary spyware,” the report says.

AI giant says it is reviewing report of attempted cyberattack on Canada’s national archives agency. OpenAI has confirmed that it is reviewing a report of a failed hacking attempt against a Canadian government body in the latest incident to highlight cybersecurity concerns about artificial intelligence. The AI giant said on Wednesday that it was reviewing the alleged cyberattack against Canada’s national archives agency and had provided an initial briefing to Canadian officials. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Execution of US woman Christa Pike fails after botched lethal injectionlist 2 of 4‘Catastrophic year’ as Swiss glaciers lose 5% of ice after heatwaveslist 3 of 4Gaza prepares to bury 105 Palestinians killed in October 2023list 4 of 4Mourners bury DR Congo official killed after defending Ebola responseend of list“Our priority is to provide affected organisations with accurate, useful information, and we’ll keep refining our approach as we learn more,” a spokesperson for the San Francisco-based company said in a statement to Al Jazeera.

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