CANADA LABELS INDIA A CYBER ADVERSARY, MEA CALLS IT ANOTHER EXAMPLE TO ATTACK NEW DELHI

Amid an ongoing diplomatic row that has adversely affected IndiaCanada ties, for the first time Canada has named India in a list of cyber threat adversaries, suggesting that state-sponsored actors could be spying against it.

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India is named fifth after China, Russia, Iran and North Korea in the National Cyber Threat Assessment 2025-2026 (NCTA 2025-2026) report.

“We assess that Indian state-sponsored cyber threat actors likely conduct cyber threat activity against Government of Canada networks for the purpose of espionage,” the report said.

The development comes as the bilateral relationship has gone south since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said a year ago that Canada had credible evidence that agents of the Indian government were involved in the murder of Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia in June 2023, a charge dismissed as absurd by India.

The NCTA 2025-2026 that highlights the cyber threats facing individuals and organisations in Canada was released on October 30 by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre), which is Canada’s technical authority on cyber security, and part of the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSE).

While there was no mention of India in the National Cyber Threat Assessment reports of 2018, 2020 and 2023-24, the 2025-26 assessment mentions India – along with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea -- in the ‘Cyber threat from state adversaries’ section that introduces the state cyber threat ecosystem and discusses the cyber threats to Canada.