Toronto, Ottawa police investigating after websites hacked

A person claiming to be a former member of the hacking group Anonymous has taken responsibility for hacking into the Toronto and Ottawa police websites.

The hacker claims to be part of a new team and says plans are in the works to attack more sites.

The Toronto police website was offline for a few hours on Sunday night after a Twitter account with the name @AerithTOR threatened to it take down.

Police said the site was the subject of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), which crashes websites by flooding servers with requests.

City of Toronto Director of Strategic Communications, Jackie DeSouza, said: “The city implemented security best practices to protect our corporate network and website.”

Mayor-elect John Tory said the city was taking the attacks seriously.

“I’ve been assured by the senior officials of the city this morning…that they are taking all appropriate steps and have been for some time to protect the city’s data and the taxpayers and citizens’ data as best as one can,” he said. “Obviously I’m very concerned.”

A statement posted online says the attacks are in retaliation for what it claims are police efforts to frame an innocent teen.

The City of Ottawa website went down on Monday afternoon, moments after Twitter account @AerithXOR2 threatened to do so.

 

The statement, distributed via Twitter by @AerithXOR2, accuses the Ottawa police of laying charges at the behest of the FBI, without any proof.

The statement identified an Ottawa police detective. Media reports say the teen is alleged to have made fake emergency calls all over North America.

The Ottawa police website was inaccessible all morning following a weekend hacking incident loosely linked to the Internet group known as Anonymous.

“When the police releases something, or makes claims, they better have 100 per cent proof to back up their claims,” the statement said. “Otherwise, you can expect us coming.”

The web problems follow an incident Friday when visitors to the city’s website saw a dancing banana graphic and a brief text message directed against an officer with the city’s police force.

Those responsible have also threatened to go after other government sites, including the Supreme Court and the Parliament of Canada, although both sites were still accessible at midday Monday.

The City of Ottawa says it doesn’t believe any sensitive information has been compromised.

Police say they are continuing to work with their service providers “to address the service issues affecting ottawapolice.ca” but added they could not comment on the ongoing police investigation.

In a release Saturday, the city said it was “confident that no corporate or resident information was compromised as a result of the breach.”

It said the “issues were related to a third-party service provider.”

With files from Toronto staff

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today