Canadian government websites likely hit with cyber attacks

Several websites operated by the Canadian government appear to have been victims of cyber attacks Wednesday morning, rendering them completely inaccessible.

“The websites appear to be the victim of what are called denial-of-service attacks,” reports the Globe & Mail.

Sites affected during the course of the morning so far include Industry, Employment, Natural Resources, Fisheries and Oceans, Justice, Labour, Foreign Affairs, Environment Canada and Transport Canada. Not all sites went completely dark; many were rendered quite slow to load.

Today’s outages are on the heels of a recent House of Commons IT warning its employees are “currently being targeted by several cyberattacks,” notes CTV.

Memos circulated last week among IT staff point to phishing emails that may be opening access to hackers.

Today’s widespread outages are being probed by officials, and cabinet ministers are being briefed on the likely DNS attacks.