Shortly before noon, communications between Hydro-Québec and its customers were still disrupted by what are believed to be the consequences of computer attacks by Russian hackers.
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Several banks, ports and Canadian government sites have also been victims of cyberattacks in recent days. That of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was still inaccessible Thursday morning.
The hackers claimed responsibility for the attacks via social media. They occur, it is pointed out, in the wake of the announcement of shipments of arms and ammunition from Canada to Ukraine.
Secure private data
In an interview, Hydro-Québec spokesperson Maxence Hard-Lefebvre confirmed that the Hydro-Québec website as well as its Espace Client and Info-Panes applications remained out of service.
The state company would have become aware of these breakdowns around 3 am. They would be caused, according to his spokesperson, by “a robot” capable of simulating a multitude of attempts to access Hydro-Quebec systems, causing them to break down.
Hydro-Québec maintains that it has the situation in hand and ensures that it has no evidence suggesting that hackers have infiltrated its systems. For now, the personal data of customers would not be in danger either.
At the time of writing these lines, we were still awaiting reactions from the Minister of Economy and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon.
More details will follow…