Pierluigi Paganini
November 22, 2016
The Canadian Armed Forces recruitment website was hacked last week, visitors have been redirected to the Chinese government’s main page instead of the legitimate website.
According to CTV television, anyone trying to sign up for Canada’s Armed Forces on the forces.ca/en/home page was redirected to the www.gov.cn site instead. The armed forces quickly took down the page.
“The recruiting web page for the Canadian Armed Forces appears to have been hacked Thursday, redirecting users to an official Chinese state page.” reported CBC News.
“Users visiting forces.ca, which is the main landing page for would-be recruits, were instead getting a page full of information and statements about Chinese government ministers, and their activities, in that country. The site now shows an error message instead”
The Canadia Armed Force promptly took the recruiting page off-line.
Two government sources told CBC News that the recruiting website was hosted externally by a private-sector provider.
One of the officials who has spoken with the media outlet revealed that servers at the Department of National Defence were not compromised in the attack.
“This is a serious matter,” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told reporters Thursday after question period. “We don’t want to jump to conclusions, but when something of this nature happens … we treat it with real gravity, and we’ll investigate it. That process is underway right now.”
The news of the hack was confirmed by the Defense ministry spokeswoman Ashley Lemire, who added that there is no information regarding the responsible.
Canadian authorities have long complained about incursions of foreign hackers into government computer networks.
“In 2014, Canada’s then Conservative government took the unusual step of singling out Chinese-based hackers for attacking a key computer network and lodged a protest with Beijing.” reported the Reuters.
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(Security Affairs – Armed Forces recruitment, Hacking)
