Potash Industry Struck by Hackers Posing as First Nations Group

On the bright side, this is pretty much the most scandalous and exciting thing to ever happen in the industry.

The potash industry in Saskatoon is believed to have been compromised after foreign hackers stole classified federal data in January. But the most shocking part of the spear-fishing attacks has just been uncovered – hackers managed to gain access to the information by posing as an aboriginal group to bypass security. The data-mining group, which is believed to have used servers in China, accessed the Finance Department and Treasury Board as a "First Nations group" and sent emails to top officials with embedded viruses. Once the emails were clicked, the hackers installed spy malware onto government networks and sent PDFs with code that helped uncover sensitive information about the potash industry from the government. A rep for Finance and Treasury said the federal government would not comment on the incident.