After boasting of having paralyzed several Quebec government sites on Wednesday, the Russian-speaking group of hackers “NoName057” claimed responsibility for several attacks on government sites elsewhere in Canada on Thursday. Two jurisdictions have also confirmed that they have been targeted by cyberattacks.
On its Telegram account, the group claimed, with screenshots to support it, to have attacked the pages of the governments of Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia , Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Yukon and British Columbia.
“NoName057” also claimed responsibility for attacks on the pages of Transport Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency and CAA.
Through a press release, Yukon and Prince Edward Island both confirmed that they had been targeted by cyberattacks.
“At midnight on September 14, Yukon.ca was the target of a cyberattack that rendered the site and other Yukon government pages inaccessible,” the territory confirmed in a statement.
According to these two governments, “distributed denial of services” type attacks were used to target their pages. This technique consists of overloading a site by multiplying connection requests to prevent real users from accessing it.
“They take a bunch of computers that are contaminated, what we call a botnet network and, on command, they send millions of requests to sites, very specific destinations,” explained cybersecurity specialist Steve Waterhouse on Wednesday. interview with The Canadian Press.
Despite the group’s assertions on social networks, The Canadian Press was able to navigate without problem Thursday evening on most of the sites mentioned in the messages from “NoName057”.
However, slowdowns were observed on the government sites of Prince Edward Island and Yukon, while those of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories seemed downright inaccessible.
Prince Edward Island and Yukon said in separate statements that the attacks did not compromise their data, but that delays could occur when making transactions at some of their locations Services.
For its part, Manitoba clarified that the interruptions affecting its services were caused by network and server problems, so that there was no indication that a cyberattack was involved.
Authorities in Prince Edward Island, Yukon and Manitoba have assured that teams are already working to resolve the problem. The Nunavut government was not immediately available for comment.
Reprisals for support for Ukraine
On Wednesday, Quebec government sites were also the target of “distributed denial of services” attacks. According to Mr. Waterhouse, these attacks, on around ten government sites, were the work of “NoName057”.
The objective was “to attack sites of nations that support Ukraine,” explained the cybersecurity expert.
They have run campaigns like this around the world. Two days ago, it was in Germany and today they are returning to Canada for the ixth time.
Steve Waterhouse, cybersecurity specialist
The group has taken part in a series of cyberattacks against the United States and its allies in the past. He also claimed responsibility for an attack on the Hydro-Québec site and mobile application in April.
On Thursday morning, the Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital Affairs confirmed that the situation was back to normal for government sites that were affected on Wednesday.
“No data was compromised by this attack. Government infrastructure is still subject to increased surveillance by the Government Cyber Defense Center,” the ministry stressed on X (formerly Twitter).
Earlier this week, weather service Météomédia and its English-speaking arm, The Weather Network, also ran into trouble due to a “cybersecurity incident.”