Shillong, September 29: Canada-India relations have soured following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s accusations that New Delhi was involved in the killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey in June.
As per IANS, in response, various Canadian government agencies have reported cyberattacks originating from India.
Canada’s signals-intelligence agency described these attacks as “nuisance,” stating that while they affected various government institutions, systems serving federal departments and agencies continued to operate normally, as reported by CTV network.
On Wednesday, the Canadian Armed Forces website experienced hours of disruption due to these cyber attacks. Military spokeswoman Andree-Anne Poulin clarified, “We have no indication of broader impacts to our systems.”
Canadian Defence Minister Bill Blair characterized the attacks as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) incidents, where websites are overwhelmed by multiple visits from bots. He noted that such attacks are unfortunately common but stated that cyber and security officials reacted swiftly. Blair added, “It was a minor inconvenience, and there is further work going on that we will eventually make a determination on.”
The House of Commons website also faced a DDoS attack on Thursday, causing temporary unresponsiveness. House of Commons spokeswoman Amelie Crosson assured that the systems responded as planned to safeguard the network and IT infrastructure. Mitigating measures were implemented, and services were restored to appropriate levels. Continuous monitoring for such activities remains in place.