Armed Forces recruitment website hacked, visitors redirected to China

Canada Armed Forces recruitment website was taken down after it was hacked and would-be recruits are redirected to a Chinese government page.

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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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Armed Forces recruitment, Hacking)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.