Nearly 24 hours after seeing its website targeted by a group of pro-Russian hackers, Hydro-Québec announced on Friday that it had restored all access to its digital platforms. The state-owned company also promises to have “strengthened” its measures to “mitigate the risk” against other possible attacks.
“Our website, including the Customer Space and the Info-pannes service, is available again. In the last 24 hours, we have reinforced existing solutions to mitigate the risk, depending on the type of attack yesterday, “explained Hydro-Quebec in a tweet, late morning.
The organization also acknowledges that, like large enterprises, it must deal with “thousands of cyberattacks a year”.
“We take the situation seriously and remain on alert. A new attack of a different nature is not impossible. More than 300 people ensure cybersecurity at Hydro-Québec,” the company finally concluded in its enfilade.
Earlier on Thursday, the “denial of service” cyberattack took place around 3 a.m., resulting in the closure of the website, the Customer Space, including Info-Panes, and the Hydro-Québec application. . This type of attack occurs when several simultaneous requests from robots are made to overload a site to block access.
It was the pro-Russian hacker group NoName057 (16) who claimed responsibility for this cyberattack on social media. In addition to Hydro-Quebec, other Quebec and Canadian companies were added Thursday to the long list of victims claimed by pro-Russian hackers: the pages of the ports of Montreal, Quebec and Halifax, those of the Laurentian and TD banks, companies Nova Bus and Matrox, in particular, were also taken offline, before being restored.
Moreover, for a third day in a row on Friday morning, the site of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in difficulty, after the attack by pro-Russian hackers following the visit of his Ukrainian counterpart Denys Shmyhal. The page faltered intermittently and notably loaded very slowly.
The hackers also made a new victim on Friday: the website of the Canadian Association of Defense Industries (CIDA), which was still inaccessible at the end of the day.
