(Reuters) – Hackers launched a cyberattack on Canada's foreign ministry last week plus some services continue to be down, officials said on Monday without disclosing who Ottawa thought was responsible.
The incident was detected last Wednesday, each day before Canada's signals intelligence agency said network operators of critical infrastructure should grow their defenses against Russian state-sponsored threats.
“Critical services – are presently functioning. Some access to internet and internet-based services are presently not working,” said a statement in the Treasury Board, that has overall responsibility for government operations.
“There is no indication that every other gov departments happen to be impacted,” it said, adding no more details would be released.
Neither the Treasury Board nor the foreign ministry responded when asked whether Russian actors were responsible.
Canada has had a strong line against Russia's military build-up on the Ukrainian border strong line against Russia's military build-up on the Ukrainian border.
Ottawa rarely speaks about hacks into its systems. This year, officials said “a highly sophisticated Chinese state-sponsored actor” had broken into a number one research body. Beijing denied it.
