Treasury Board President Tony Clement confirmed to reporters on Parliament Hill Wednesday afternoon that the shutdowns were caused by a denial of service cyberattack.
“I’ve just been through a briefing on it,” Clement said. “There has been an attack on Government of Canada servers.”
“We are working very diligently to restore services and to find out the origination of the attack,” he added.
“If Canadians have any issues and are being denied access to a GC account, they should phone 1-800-O-Canada,” Clement advised.
Clement could not say whether any data had been stolen or who might have directed the attack.
The attacks were what are known as directed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, where hackers flood a website with traffic to deny regular access.
The video said the anti-terrorism law, recently passed by the Canadian Senate, violated human rights and targeted people who disagree with the government.
The hacker collective known as Anonymous had also pledged an attack on government servers in protest of Bill C-51, the Conservatives' new terror laws, for today.
