Hydro-Quebec’s website has been shut down as a series of computer attacks by pro-Russian groups have targeted Canadian critical infrastructure in recent days.

In Quebec, the port of Montreal, Port Quebec, Laurentian Bank, the graphics card manufacturer Matrox in Dorval and the bus company Prévost are among those affected this week.

The attacks targeted several other organizations across the country, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s website, the port authorities of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Port Alberni, British Columbia.

Hackers’ modus operandi is to perform a denial of service attack by flooding a website with requests to stop it from working. This type of attack usually does not compromise the confidentiality of victims’ data.

At the federal level, we confirm there has been a spike in attacks on critical infrastructure in Canada since Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Chmyhal visited earlier in the week, but declined to comment directly on Link, during a technical briefing for the media.

Breakdown at Hydro-Québec

The Hydro Quebec website and Info Outages service were shut down around 3:00 am Thursday. However, Hydro-Québec spokesman Francis Labbé confirmed that the info breakdown service would be back up and running.

Again in the afternoon, any attempt to access the www.hydroquebec.com address resulted in a page showing that the site is not accessible.

Mr. Labbé told The Canadian Press that the company’s critical systems were unaffected. Data and personal information could therefore be protected, he said.

The representative of the state-owned company added that he could not yet hypothesize the identity of individuals or a group responsible for the cyberattack. However, the attack was claimed by the group NoName057 (16) on the Telegram application.

Mr. Labbé pointed out that a team of about 300 people is at the service of the state-owned company to prevent cyberattacks as much as possible and to counter them when they occur.