(17-Feb-11)  While a cyber attack similar to the one that compromised three key federal departments will almost certainly happen again, the damage can be limited if the government acts to break down technology silos and implement selective two-factor authentication measures, according to Canadian security experts.

The attack, which reportedly originated from computers in China, targeted economic data in the federal Finance department, Treasury Board, and Defence Research and Development Canada, CBC News said Thursday. The hackers used an “executive spear-phishing” attack, which involved sending bogus e-mails to pass themselves off as senior executives to lower ranking government bureaucrats.

The social engineering technique was aimed at requesting passwords to ultimately gain access to government systems.

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