Ottawa: Canada has for the primary time named India in a listing of cyberthreat adversaries, suggesting that state-sponsored actors might be spying towards it.
Amid an ongoing diplomatic row, India is known as fifth after China, Russia, Iran and North Korea within the Nationwide Cyber Risk Evaluation 2025-2026 (NCTA 2025-2026) report.
“We assess that Indian state-sponsored cyber menace actors probably conduct cyber menace exercise towards Authorities of Canada networks for the aim of espionage,” the report stated.
The event comes because the bilateral relationship has gone south since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated a yr in the past that Canada had credible proof that brokers of the Indian authorities have been concerned within the homicide of Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia in June 2023, a cost dismissed as absurd by India.
The NCTA 2025-2026 that highlights the cyber threats dealing with people and organisations in Canada was launched on October 30 by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Safety (Cyber Centre), which is Canada’s technical authority on cyber safety, and a part of the Communications Safety Institution Canada (CSE).
Whereas there was no point out of India within the Nationwide Cyber Risk Evaluation studies of 2018, 2020 and 2023-24, the 2025-26 evaluation mentions India – together with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — within the ‘Cyber menace from state adversaries’ part that introduces the state cyber menace ecosystem and discusses the cyber threats to Canada.
“India’s management virtually definitely aspires to construct a modernised cyber programme with home cyber capabilities. India very probably makes use of its cyber programme to advance its nationwide safety imperatives, together with espionage, counterterrorism, and the nation’s efforts to advertise its international standing and counter narratives towards India and the Indian authorities,” the evaluation report stated.
“We assess that India’s cyber programme probably leverages industrial cyber distributors to reinforce its operations. We assess that Indian state-sponsored cyber menace actors probably conduct cyber menace exercise towards Authorities of Canada networks for the aim of espionage,” it stated additional.
“We choose that official bilateral relations between Canada and India will very probably drive Indian state-sponsored cyber menace exercise towards Canada,” it claimed.
CSE and its companions in Canada and throughout the 5 Eyes are attuned to the cyber threats to Canada from state and nonstate cyber menace actors and are monitoring them as they evolve, the report stated.
NCTA 2025-2026 offers the Canadian public with CSE’s present insights on the state and non-state cyber menace actors conducting malicious cyber menace exercise towards Canada and the way we assess the cyber menace panorama will evolve within the subsequent two years, it added.
