Cyberattack that paralyzed Hydro-Quebec website and app is resolved
Posted April 14, 2023 8:43 am.
Last Updated April 14, 2023 11:05 am.
MONTREAL – Access to Hydro-Quebec’s website and application was restored early Friday after a 24-hour outage caused by a cyberattack.
The outage occurred around 3:00 a.m. on Thursday, and for several hours, any attempt to access www.hydroquebec.com resulted in a page indicating that the site was inaccessible.
Hackers hit the site by what is called a denial of service attack, by flooding a website with requests to prevent it from functioning.
A representative of Hydro-Quebec, Francis Labbé, assured The Canadian Press Thursday that the critical systems of the company had not been affected. Data and personal information were therefore protected, he said.
Mr. Labbé said that a team of about 300 people was at the service of the state company to prevent as much as possible cyber attacks and to counter them when they occur.
The incident at Hydro-Quebec was one of a series of cyber attacks by pro-Russian groups in recent days in Canada. In Quebec, the Port of Montreal, Port Quebec, Laurentian Bank, the graphics card manufacturer Matrox in Dorval and the Prévost bus company were affected.
The attacks also affected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s website, the port authorities in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Port Alberni, British Columbia.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French April 14, 2023.
