Review

Unpacking the CSE’s 2021-2022 Annual Report

/ Christopher Parsons
black binocular on round device
Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) released its 2021-2022 Annual report on June 28, 2022.1 The CSE is Canada’s leading foreign signals intelligence and cryptologic agency. It is specifically tasked with collecting foreign intelligence, defending government of Canada networks as well as private networks and systems deemed of importance by the government, providing assistance to federal partners, and conducting active and defensive cyber operations.2 The CSE operates as a Canadian equivalent to the United Kingdom’s GCHQ.

Five things stood out to me in the annual report:

  1. It provides more details about the kinds of active and defensive cyber operations that the CSE has undertaken while also clarifying when such operations might take place. This information is important given the potentially deleterious or unintended impacts of the CSE exercising these capabilities. It is, however, worth recognizing that the CSE is casting these activities as preventative in nature and does not include a legal discussion about these kinds of operations.
  2. The report extensively discusses threats to critical infrastructure and the activities that the CSE is undertaking to defend against, mitigate, or remediate such threats. Many of the currently voluntary engagements between the CSE and industry partners could become compulsory (or, at a minimum, less voluntary), in the future, should Canada’s recently tabled infrastructure security legislation be passed into law.
  3. We generally see a significant focus on the defensive side of the CSE’s activities, vis-a-vis the Cyber Centre. This obscures the fact that the majority of the agency’s budget is allocated towards supporting the CSE’s foreign intelligence and active/defensive cyber operations teams. The report, thus, is selectively revelatory.
  4. No real discussion takes place to make clear to readers how aspects of the CSE’s foreign intelligence, cybersecurity/information assurance, assistance, or active or defensive cyber operations authorities may interoperate with one another. The result is that readers are left uncertain about how combinations of authorities might enable broader operations than are otherwise self-apparent.
  5. As I raise at several points when analyzing the annual report there are a number of situations where information in the annual report risks concealing the broader range(s) of actions that the CSE may undertake. Readers of the annual report are thus advised to critically assess the annual report and read what it specifically says instead of what it may imply.

In this post, I proceed in the order of the report and adopt the headlines it used to structure content. After summarizing some of the highlight elements in a given section I proceed with a short discussion of the relevant section. The post concludes with a broader assessment of the annual report, what was learned, and where more information is desirable in the future.

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Unpacking NSICOP’s Special Report on the Government of Canada’s Framework and Activities to Defend its Systems and Networks from Cyber Attack

/ Christopher Parsons
grayscale photo of man and woman hacking a computer system
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

On February 14, 2022, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) released a report that explored how the Government of Canada sought to defend its systems and networks from cyber attack from 2001 onwards.1 The report provides a comprehensive account of how elements of the Government of Canada–namely the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS), Shared Services Canada (SSC) and Communications Security Establishment (CSE)–have developed policies, procedures, and techniques to protect government systems, as well as the iterative learning processes that have occurred over the past two decades or so pertaining to governmental cyber defence activities.

I want to highlight four core things that emerge from my reading of the report:

  1. From an empirical point of view, it’s useful to know that the Government of Canada is preparing both a policy on paying ransomware operators as well as developing a Vulnerabilities Disclosure Policy (VDP) though the report does not indicate when either will be open to public comment or transformed into formal government policy;
  2. A high-level discussion of senior coordination committees is provided, though without an accompanying analysis of how effective these committees are in practice. In particular, the report does not discuss how, as an example, cross-departmental committees are working to overcome problems that are raised in the sections of the report focused on TBS, SSC, or the CSE;
  3. NSICOP maintains that all parties associated with the government–from Crown corporations, to government agencies, to other independent branches of government–should operate under the government’s security umbrella. NSICOP does not, however, make a constitutional argument for why this should be done nor assess the operational reasons for why agencies may not currently operate under this umbrella. Instead, the report narrowly argues there are minimal privacy impacts associated with enjoying the government’s cyber security protections. In doing so, the committee presumes that privacy concerns have driven separate branches of governments to operate outside policies set by TBS, and services offered by SSC and the CSE. At no point did the Committee engage with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) to assess potential privacy issues associated with the government’s cyber security policies and practices; and
  4. NSICOP did not canvas a wide set of government agencies in their interviews and included no external-to-government parties. The consequence is that the report does not provide needed context for why some government agencies refuse to adopt TBS policy guidance or regulations, decline services operated by SSC, or have limited uptake or adoption of advice or technical systems offered by the CSE. The consequence is that this report does nothing to substantively assess challenges in how TBS, SSC, or the CSE themselves are deploying their defensive capacities across government based on the experiences of those on the receiving end of the proffered cyber security and defence offerings.

In this post, I conduct a deep dive into NSICOP’s report, entitled “National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Special Report on the Government of Canada’s Framework and Activities to Defend its Systems and Networks from Cyber Attack.” Throughout, I summarize a given section of the report before offering some analysis of it. In the conclusion of this post I summarize some of the broader concerns associated with the report, itself, as well as the broader implications these concerns may have for NSICOP’s long-term viability as an independent reviewer of the national security community.

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Reflections on “Foreign Interference: Threats to Canada’s Democratic Process”

/ Christopher Parsons
crop hacker typing on laptop with data on screen
Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com

It is widely expected that Canadians will be going to the polls in the next few months. In advance of the election the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has published an unclassified report entitled, “Foreign Interference: Threats to Canada’s Democratic Process.”1 

In this post I briefly discuss some of the highlights of the report and offer some productive criticism concerning who the report and its guidance is directed at, and the ability for individuals to act on the provided guidance. The report ultimately represents a valuable contribution to efforts to increase the awareness of national security issues in Canada and, on that basis alone, I hope that CSIS and other members of Canada’s intelligence and security community continue to publish these kinds of reports.

Summary

The report generally outlines a series of foreign interference-related threats that face Canada, and Canadians. Foreign interference includes, “attempts to covertly influence, intimidate, manipulate, interfere, corrupt or discredit individuals, organizations and governments to further the interests of a foreign country” and are, “carried out by both state and non-state actors” towards, “Canadian entities both inside and outside of Canada, and directly threaten national security” (Page 5). The report is divided into sections which explain why Canada and Canadians are targets of foreign interference, the types of foreign states’ goals, who might be targeted, and the techniques that might be adopted to apply foreign interference and how to detect and avoid such interference. The report concludes by discussing some of the election-specific mechanisms that have been adopted by the Government of Canada to mitigate the effects and effectiveness of foreign interference operations.

On the whole this is a pretty good overview document. It makes a good academic teaching resource, insofar as it provides a high-level overview of what foreign interference can entail and would probably serve as a nice kick off to discuss the topic of foreign interference more broadly.2

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Review of Desk.PM’s Publishing App (v. 1.0)

/ Christopher Parsons / 6 Comments

Desk.pmI downloaded a copy of Desk last week, an OS X applications that is designed for bloggers by bloggers. It costs $30 from the Mac App Store, which is in line with other blogging software for OS X.

To cut to the chase, I like the application but, as it stands right now, version 1.0 feels like it’s just barely out of beta. As a result there’s no way that I could recommend that anyone purchase Desk until a series of important bug fixes are implemented.

What’s to Love

I write in Markdown. At this point it’s so engrained in how I stylize my writing that even my paper notebooks (yes, I still use those…) prominently feature Markdown so I can understand links, heading levels, levels of emphasis, and so forth. Desk uses Markdown and also offers a GUI where, after highlighting some text, you’re given the option to stylize add boldface or italics, insert a hyperlink, or generally add in some basic HTML. That means that people like me (Markdown users) are happy as are (presumably) those who prefer working from a graphical user interface. Everyone wins!

In line with other contemporary writing applications (e.g. Byword, Write) the menu options are designed to just fade away while you’re writing. This means there are no distractions when you’re involved in writing itself and that’s a good thing. You always have the option to calling up the menu items just by just scrolling somewhere in the main window. So, the menu is there when you want it and absent when you’re actually working. Another win.

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Released: Literature Review of Deep Packet Inspection

/ Christopher Parsons

Scholars and civil advocates will be meeting next month in Toronto at the Cyber-surveillance in Everyday Life workshop. Participants will critically interrogate the surveillance infrastructures pervading daily life as well as share experiences, challenges, and strategies meant to to rein in overzealous surveillance processes that damage public and private life. My contribution to the workshop comes in the form of a modest overview of literature examining Deep Packet Inspection. Below is an abstract, as well as a link to a .pdf version on the review.

Abstract

Deep packet inspection is a networking technology that facilitates intense scrutiny of data, in real-time, as key chokepoints on the Internet. Governments, civil rights activists, technologists, lawyers, and private business have all demonstrated interest in the technology, though they often disagree about what constitutes legitimate uses. This literature review takes up the most prominent scholarly analyses of the technology. Given Canada’s arguably leading role in regulating the technology, many of its regulator’s key documents and evidentiary articles are also included. The press has been heatedly interested in the technology, and so round out the literature review alongside civil rights advocates, technology vendors, and counsel analyses.

Downloadable .pdf version of the literature review.

Review: Apple iPad

/ Christopher Parsons

I pre-ordered the iPad  as soon as I could and unpacked it the day that I returned from a trip to South America (that saw me miss its actual delivery). I’ve had the device for over a month now, have been actively using it, and wanted to offer my impressions. Those impressions, I will note, are significantly conditioned by the reasons that I bought the device, which I’ll outline. I’ll first briefly address the actual hardware and operating system of the device, then move to what I like and dislike about the product. Ultimately, I’m happy with the device and have absolutely no regrets in getting this particular first-gen Apple product.

The screen, ergonomics, and weight are all fine. It’s using an IPS-LCD, which means that viewing angles are good and colour reproduction is pretty faithful. While some have criticized the back for being slightly rounded, it hasn’t bothered me in any way, nor has the weight of 1.5lbs struck me as ‘heavy’ though the device is heavier than appearances might lead one to believe. There is a bezel surrounding the screen itself and it makes sense: I can rest my hands on the non-interactive bezel without affecting whatever I’m displaying on the screen. This is a good thing. the iPad has the same touch interface as the iPhone and iPod Touch. This makes the iPad simple to use, if lacking any deviant features from those earlier devices (and, with the release of iOS 4, the iPad actually has slightly fewer features than the iPhone or Touch). In light of its use of the older 3.2 release of the OS, the iPad is horrible if you rely on multiple windows being open to get work done and is a poor choice for any content producer looking to do a lot of work on it that will see you flipping between a document/content production editor and the web. In effect, anyone who’s tried doing intensive content production on the iPhone or Touch will largely encounter the same old problems here. I’m not saying that you can’t do such production, but it’s far less convenient than on a full desktop/notebook or even netbook. On the upside: the device is light and battery life is good (I tend to go for 36-72 hours without needing to plug in, with moderate to heavy use each day).

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