CYBERATTACKS HIT PARLIAMENT, MILITARY WEBSITES AS ‘INDIAN CYBER FORCE’ TARGETS CANADA

Fri 29 September 2023:

This week, the Canadian government has been dealing with cyberattacks as an Indian hacking group claims to have created chaos in Ottawa. CTV reported. However, Canada’s signals-intelligence agency says it’s likely that the “nuisance” attacks haven’t put sensitive information at danger.

The government-controlled institutions appear to have been targeted by the attacks, but not the central infrastructure from which federal ministries and agencies run.

The Canadian Armed Forces says its website became unavailable to mobile users midday Wednesday, but was fixed within a few hours.

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The military said the site is separate from government servers 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 spokeswoman Andree-Anne Poulin.

Defence Minister Bill Blair confirmed the incident was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which is when bots swarm a website with multiple visits and cause it to stop loading properly.

“That’s a very common thing that happens, unfortunately, often. But our cyberofficials and security officials acted very, very quickly,” he said Thursday.

“It was a minor inconvenience, and there is further work going on that we will eventually make a determination on.”

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Indian Cyber Force

A hacking group named Indian Cyber Force claimed responsibility for the incidents involving the military, the hospital and Elections Canada, and it appeared 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.

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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.