The federal government is coping with apparent cyberattacks this week as a hacker group in India takes credit for sowing chaos in Ottawa.
The Canadian Armed Forces says that its website became unavailable to mobile users midday Wednesday, but was fixed within a few hours.
The military says the site is separate from other government sites, such as the one used by the Department of Defence and internal military networks. The incident remains under investigation.
“We have no indication of broader impacts to our systems,” said a statement from spokesperson Andree-Anne Poulin.
Meanwhile, various pages on the House of Commons website are continuing to load slowly or incompletely due to an ongoing attack that officials say started Monday morning.
The Commons administration says it’s facing a distributed denial-of-service attack, which is what happens when bots swarm a website with multiple visits, causing it to stop loading properly.
“House of Commons systems responded as planned to protect our network and IT infrastructure. However, some websites may be unresponsive for a short period,” spokesperson Amelie Crosson said in a written statement Thursday morning.
There are signs that India may be softening its stance on the allegations that Indian agents were behind the assassination of Canadian Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C., in June. There have been several instances of Indian officials saying they were open to discussions with Canada, possibly due to pressure from the U.S. and other western governments.
“The House of Commons IT support team, in collaboration with our partners, have implemented mitigating measures and restored services to appropriate service levels. The IT team is still continuously monitoring for such activities.”
She added that Commons administration is helping its Senate colleagues “provide guidance and support them to restore services.”
A hacking group called Indian Cyber Force has claimed responsibility for the incident involving the military, and appears to have managed to infiltrate a handful of websites owned by small businesses in Canada.
The group made reference to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau telling Parliament on Sept. 18 that there were “credible allegations” of Indian involvement in the killing of Sikh independence activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who had been wanted by India for years and was gunned down in June outside the temple he led.
The hacking group has posted multiple versions of a message riddled with spelling and grammatical errors onto websites of restaurants and medical clinics.
The affected sites show a message on a black background with green digits, similar to the film “The Matrix,” as warlike music plays.
The message described Canada as a haven for terrorists — a “heaven hub,” it said in butchered English — and similarly insulted Sikh separatists.
It also criticized Trudeau for “throwing something without any prove,” or proof.
The group also claimed to have attacked Elections Canada, the Ottawa Hospital and the Global Affairs Canada website for travel advisories, though these sites appeared to be operating normally Thursday morning.
The Canadian Press has asked those responsible for these web pages to state whether they have been affected.
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