Toronto Police Service website down after DDoS attack

The Toronto Police Service website went down on Sunday evening after a Twitter user threatened to hack it.

According to police, the site was the subject of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

Twitter user @AerithTOR claimed responsibility for the attack on the social networking site.

A DDoS attack floods a website with several requests and if the website's server cannot handle the volume of requests, the website crashes.

@AerithTOR also suggested that they would be targeting the Conservative Party of Canada and Parliament of Canada websites. Both sites were online Sunday night.

The Ottawa Police Service and Supreme Court of Canada websites went down on Saturday evening. The Ottawa police website was still down as of Sunday night.

The City of Ottawa website was hacked Friday evening and replaced with a black screen and a dancing banana, along with a message attributed to @AerithXOR. @AerithTOR claimed this was his former account and said it had been suspended.

The message the hacker left on Ottawa's police website contained the name of an area police officer. The officer was involved with the investigation of an Ottawa teen who is alleged to have made calls reporting fake emergencies to emergency services agencies across North America.

Toronto police were unavailable for further comment. The Toronto Police Services website remained offline on Sunday night.

via DDoS Attacks