The federal government is grappling with what appears to be cyberattacks as an India-based hacking group claims it has “sowed chaos” in Ottawa. However, Canadians’ sensitive data would not have been at risk.

The Canadian Armed Forces reported that its website was inaccessible using a mobile device as of midday Wednesday, but the problem was resolved within a few hours.

Meanwhile, several pages on the House of Commons website continued to load slowly or incompletely on Thursday due to an attack that officials said began Monday morning.

The House of Commons has confirmed it was the target of some sort of attack Distributed denial of service. This technique consists of overloading a site by multiplying connection requests to prevent real users from accessing it.

The House of Commons systems responded as expected to protect our network and IT infrastructure. However, some sites may stop responding for a short period of time.

The House of Commons IT support team, working with our partners, has implemented remedial measures and brought services back to an appropriate level. The IT team always continuously monitors such activities.

Elections Canada was also the victim of an attack by Distributed denial of service for about an hour, around midnight on Wednesday.

No sensitive data or information is hosted on this website. It is separate from our main Elections.ca site and hosted by a third-party service provider. It is in no way affiliated with the network that supports Elections.cathe federal agency said in a news release.

Our systems are monitored in real time both internally and by the Canadian Center for Cyber ​​Security, which allows us to quickly identify any anomalies on our platforms and systems. You are aware of the incident.

Just annoying

The Communications Security Establishment, contacted by The Canadian Press, reiterated that it does not typically confirm specific incidents and noted that it focuses on the type of behavior rather than attributing attacks.

In general, distributed denial of service attacks are malicious events but very rarely compromise information and do not have a lasting impact on systems.

Geopolitical events often lead to an increase in disruptive cyber campaigns. We continue to monitor all cyber threats and share information about these threats with our partners and stakeholders to help prevent incidents.

On September 15, the Center warned this multiple distributed denial of service campaigns had taken place in the previous days. He renewed this warning on September 22 during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Canada.

An Indian group claims

A group of hackers called Indian Cyber ​​Force claimed responsibility for attacks on Canada’s armed forces and elections. The group also appears to have managed to infiltrate some small business websites in Canada.

In claiming to be behind the attacks, the group pointed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who disclosed the existence of the allegations in Parliament on September 18 credible Accordingly, India was involved in the murder of Sikh independence activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was wanted by India for years and shot dead in June.

The group posted multiple versions of a message full of spelling and grammatical errors on restaurant and clinic websites.

On the affected areas we could see green numbers on a black background like in the film The Matrixwhile war music could be heard.

The message described Canada as a haven for terrorists – a Heaveneven in broken English – and insulted Sikh separatists.

Mr. Trudeau was also criticized for this something brought into existence without evidence.

Diplomatic tensions with India

These attacks occurred in a tense context between Canada and India.

It remains unclear to what extent Indian officials are cooperating in the investigation into Mr. Trudeau’s allegations — and to what extent allied countries such as the United States are defending Canada’s interests.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

Neither mentioned the controversy in Canada as they took part in a photo op before their meeting began.

In a briefing with reporters before the meeting began, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller declined to speculate on what Mr. Blinken would say privately to Mr. Jaishankar.

What I can tell you, however, is that we have been in constant dialogue with the Indian government on this issue and have urged them to cooperate with the Canadian authoritieshe mentioned.