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Canadian government websites hacked due to controversial anti-terror bill

Xinhua, June 18, 2015 Adjust font size:

Canadian Treasury Board President Tony Clement has confirmed that Canada's federal government web servers were hacked Wednesday afternoon.

Clement said via Twitter that Public Safety and Shared Services are working to restore service to federal sites.

The cyber attack happened around 3 p.m. Wednesday, causing several Canadian government websites to break down, including Canada.ca and the sites for Foreign Affairs, Transport Canada, Citizenship and Immigration and Justice Canada, impacting e-mail, internet access and information technology assets.

"We are working very diligently to restore service as soon as possible, and to find out the origination of the attack," Clement said.

Hackers Anonymous announced responsibility for the attack to retaliate Canada's recent approval of new anti-terrorism that expands the powers and reach of Canada's spy agency.

"Today, this 17th of June, 2015 we launched an attack against the Canadian Senate and Government of Canada websites in protest against the recent passing of Bill C-51, a bill which is a clear violation of the universal declaration of human rights," anonymous hackers said in a YouTube video.

The anti-terror Bill C-51 was passed last week, but has generated controversy since it was introduced in January. Endite