Canada Cyber Attack Initiated by Anonymous

Major Canadian government websites and servers have experienced a series of cyber attacks. Canada cyber attack crashed federal websites and email services for almost 2 hours. This cyber attack has raised questions about capability of Canada’s cyber security to withstand such cyber attacks.

According to government officials cyber attack has disrupted email services and access to internet and servers. Hacktivist group Anonymous claimed responsibility for Canada cyber attack in #OpCyberPiracy in their latest video:

Cyber attacks were conducted in protest of the passage of C-51, anti-terrorism bill empowering intelligence and security agencies.

The attack began some time after noon ET and individuals purporting to be part of the hackivist group Anonymous later claimed responsibility, saying they were protesting the passage of C-51, anti-terror legislation that gives new powers to intelligence and security agencies. The legislation, once enacted by the government, would also make it easier for federal agencies to increase surveillance and share information about individuals.

The primary website for government services, Canada.ca, as well as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) website, were among those affected. During this attack many websites for major federal services and departments were inaccessible including those in the fields of Industry, Justice, Natural Resources, Trade and Foreign Affairs.

Canada cyber attack was a denial-of-service attack that targeted computer servers for the gc.ca domain – used by the majority of Canadian government websites.

During an assault such as this, hackers flood a website with outside requests to communicate, leaving it unable to deal with legitimate Web traffic and liable to shutting down. They often harness a multitude of computers to attack a single target and, in this case, are called distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.