The pro-Russian group NoName claimed responsibility on its Telegram account on Saturday for an outage affecting the websites of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the port of Hamilton-Oshawa, located on the shores of Lake Ontario.
The Prime Minister of Canada’s website was unable to access intermittently on Saturday. The Hamilton-Oshawa Port-Authority website was also affected by this outage.
On its Telegram feed, the pro-Russian group NoName announced on Saturday morning that it had decided to “take a trip to Canada”.
He said he was able to bypass the Canadian Senate website. The latter was however functional on Saturday afternoon. He then attacked the Prime Minister’s website and that of the Ontario port.
Then, the pro-Russian group brought its actions back to Europe and attacked various Polish authorities, including the metro in the capital Warsaw, he said on Telegram.
Two close attacks
Less than ten days ago, these same pro-Russian hackers had claimed responsibility for other cyberattacks in Canada, including one against the Prime Minister’s site. The attack occurred when Justin Trudeau received his Ukrainian counterpart, Denys Chmyhal, in Toronto.
PHOTO CARLOS OSORIO, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Chmyhal and his Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau in Toronto on April 11
“It’s not unusual for Russian hackers to target countries when they demonstrate their unwavering support for Ukraine by receiving a visit from a large Ukrainian political delegation, so the timing is not surprising,” said so said Justin Trudeau at a press conference with his Kyiv counterpart.
Let me be extremely clear: the fact that for a few hours there was a government page that was difficult to access is not going to deter us from being present and always there to do more to support the Ukraine.
Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, on April 11
The goal: to “disturb” society
“Is there a resurgence of these types of attacks? Yes. And with complete impunity, because Russian hackers can do these crimes and no one is going to look for them in Russia,” explains cybersecurity expert Steve Waterhouse.
” [Ces criminels] have fun like that,” adds Mr. Waterhouse. It’s really to disturb our society, to make us have a bad time and to antagonize the population against the government. To change opinions. It’s a war of attrition. »
In his view, if the hackers succeed in affecting certain infrastructures and destabilizing the economy, they will have gained points.