The Department of National Defence (DND) says it has re-established “positive control” over its recruitment website, which was apparently hacked Thursday, redirecting users to the official Chinese state portal.
People trying to get on forces.ca were instead directed to gov.cn, the landing page of the Chinese central government’s website. Forces.ca was taken down soon after the problem was discovered.
READ MORE: Hacked Canadian Forces website taken down after redirecting to Chinese state portal
There were concerns that the personal information of military recruits may have been stolen or compromised, but authorities say that there is no evidence that this occurred.
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“There has been no operational impact… and there are no indications that any of our data was accessed,” a DND spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Our preliminary assessment is that the redirection was achieved by manipulating the Domain Name Service (DNS) and not the website itself.”
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The official declined to offer information about the origin of the intrusion.
“We take system security extremely seriously and continue to investigate,” he said. “We will not speculate on the motivations or point of origin of the site redirection.”
The site, one of several operated by the military, remains down while authorities work to set up an interim webpage to host recruitment information.
With files from the Canadian Press
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