Secret Canadian government data hacked

OTTAWA, June 3 (UPI) -- Computer hackers stole classified information from two Canadian ministries in January, government documents show.

The hackers sent e-mails to staff that seemed to come from senior managers, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported. When recipients opened the attachments, the hackers got a path into the federal network.

Stockwell Day, then the Treasury Board president, told the CBC Thursday he was not told of the breach.

"Certainly, on the information that I got, I had full confidence that the systems had moved quickly to shut down, that significant information had not in fact been carried away, and that the ongoing assessment of that by the technicians continues," he said.

The Department of Finance and the Treasury Board were still restricting Internet access for their workers Thursday. The agencies now have separate computer stations disconnected from the main government network.

A secret May 2010 memo from Canada's spy agency warned that cyberattacks on government, university and industry computers were growing "substantially."