Montrealers who fend off pro-Putin hacker attacks on Ukrainian sites almost daily are unimpressed by Hydro-Quebec.
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“It should be small beer, thwarting an attack like the one that crashed the Hydro site”, comments Michel Lambert, the main manager of eQualitie, a company specializing in the protection of NGO websites particularly targeted. by pirates or the secret services of dictatorships.
Founded by Dmitri VItaliev, the son of a Russian dissident from the days of the Soviet Union, the company operates in the heat of the moment from its offices in the Plateau–Mont-Royal.
In particular, it offers a service called Deflect which deflects computer attacks directed against its customers towards… itself!
“Every day, hacking attempts target our customers, but we are the ones who receive them and push them back,” boasts Mr. Lambert.
“We hosted the site of the Black Lives Matter movement which was being attacked every morning.”
“We also host indigenous organizations in El Salvador and LGBTQ in Russia.”
- Listen to the interview with Patrick Mathieu, co-founder of Hackfest on Philippe-Vincent Foisy’s show broadcast live every day via QUB-radio :
fire of action
Ironically, it is by voluntarily defending these customers who attract pirates like flies that the small Quebec company, constantly on a war footing, has the opportunity to keep up to date with the progress of the increasingly ingenious means of hackers.
“We have an artificial intelligence program that monitors the actions of hackers and learns to spot their attacks and counter them more and more effectively everywhere at the same time,” explains Lambert.
In other words, what eQualitie’s artificial intelligence learns from the war in Ukraine about Russian hacking methods, for example, could be useful to Quebec or Canadian customers… especially if they are the target of the same entities. malicious.
Small player
To finance its volunteering with more than 700 NGOs at risk of sophisticated computer attacks, the Quebec company also has paying customers… but not Hydro-Quebec or another state-owned company.
“We are a small player. Big organizations like Hydro tend to turn to American giants for protection,” laments Mr. Lambert.
“If a state corporation calls us, we will be able to make a competitive offer.”