GO Transit website back online, CRA’s still unavailable after being taken down to protect from global internet flaw
GO Transit's website was brought back online Saturday afternoon after it had been down to protect it from an ongoing cyber vulnerability on Friday, Metrolinx said.
The website was restored after it had was updated to protect it from the latest cyber-vulnerability regarding web-based services around the globe," a spokesperson told the Star.
Metrolinx was informed by the Government of Canada about an ongoing cyber vulnerability regarding web-based services around the globe," the transit agency said in a statement earlier.
The decision to take down the website was out of an abundance of caution," it said, adding there is no indication any customer, personal or financial files were compromised.
Customers of the service that covers the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas had been advised that ticket and planning services were available in different places, like the website Triplinx.
Metrolinx provided updates and information for people travelling to Hamilton for the Grey Cup game this weekend.
Canada Revenue Agency similarly took down its systems while it worked to apply the appropriate security upgrades to our systems," the agency tweeted Friday night.
There is currently no indication that CRA systems have been compromised, or that there has been any unauthorized access to taxpayer information because of this vulnerability," the agency added.
Statistics Canada's data portal also seemed to be offline for similar reasons. The Star reached out to StatsCan regarding the outage and had yet to hear back.
These proactive measures came amid ongoing concerns about a serious computer weakness that makes business and government websites vulnerable to data breaches.
The weakness, located in an open-source software used to run websites, was recently exploited in the online game Minecraft."
Experts said the extreme ease with which the vulnerability lets an attacker access a web server - no password required - is what makes it so dangerous.
With files from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press.
Akrit Michael is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star's radio room in Toronto. Reach him via email: amichael@thestar.ca