The Toronto Police Service says its website has been targeted by cyber-attackers, but no data was stolen.
“We had a Distributed Denial of Service(DDOS) attack. This is just a flooding of our servers with requests, too many for it to handle,” TPS spokesperson David Hopkinson told CTV News in an email Monday. “Our servers are down temporarily. Our website itself was never breached.”
On Sunday users reported not being able to access the Toronto police website for about three hours.
The attack came at the same time that Ottawa police and the City of Ottawa reported their websites were hacked over the weekend.
As of Monday morning, the Ottawa police website still could not be accessed.
On Friday, visitors to the City of Ottawa’s website were greeted by a dancing banana and a message directed against an Ottawa police officer.
The website went back up over the weekend only to come down again Monday. It has since come back online.
Ottawa officials said they don’t believe any sensitive information was accessed.
According to a statement released by a group claiming to be behind the cyber attack, the sites were targeted because of charges against an Ottawa teen who is accused of “swatting,” a nickname for the practice of luring police SWAT teams to fake emergencies for comedy value.
A message sent to CTV News over the weekend by a Twitter user claiming responsibility for the attacks said that the hackers are trying to draw attention to the teen’s case and vowed to continue the attacks until the charges are dropped.
“This is not the end, in fact we are just getting started,” the statement said.
The accused teen’s father met with reporters Saturday to say the hackers had sent him a message claiming responsibility for the attacks and providing him with evidence that his son has been falsely accused.
The statement took responsibility for hacking the websites of the City of Ottawa, Ottawa Police and the Supreme Court of Canada.
The Ottawa teen and his father cannot be named due to a court order protecting the teen’s identity.
-with files from The Canadian Press and CTV News
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