BREAKING: Canada Revenue Agency Website Closed Due To Security Issues [UPDATED]
News is breaking in Canada that the Canada Revenue Agency, the section of the government that handles income tax returns among other things has closed their website. CBC is reporting that it has to do with the OpenSSL bug that I reported yesterday. Now this comes at a really bad time for the Canadian Government as income taxes are due at the end of the month and everyone and their dog are filing their taxes online. Hopefully this gets resolved very quickly.
UPDATE: The CRA has posted this statement:
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) places first priority on ensuring the confidentiality of taxpayer information.
After learning late yesterday afternoon about the Internet security vulnerability named the Heartbleed Bug that is affecting systems around the world, the CRA acted quickly, as a preventative measure, to temporarily shut down public access to our online services to safeguard the integrity of the information we hold. Applications affected include online services like EFILE, NETFILE, My Account, My Business Account and Represent a Client.
We are currently working on a remedy for restoring online services and, at this time, anticipate that services will resume over the weekend.
The CRA recognizes that this problem may represent a significant inconvenience for individual Canadians who count on the CRA for online information and services.
Recognizing this, the Minister of National Revenue has confirmed that individual taxpayers will not be penalized for this service interruption.
We continue to investigate any potential impacts to taxpayer information, and to be fully engaged in resolving this matter and restoring online services as soon as possible in a manner that ensures the private information of Canadians remains safe and secure.
We will provide further information and daily updates at 3PM EDT on our home page.
March 13, 2017 at 8:28 am
[…] the CRA has had to take down their site because of a security issue. They got hit by someone who pwned them via an Open SSL bug known as Heartbleed a few years back. That led to a 19 year old being put in the clink because of it. But not before other Canadian […]
August 16, 2020 at 5:41 pm
[…] thing is that this isn’t the first time that the Canada Revenue Agency has been hacked. Though the person behind that hack was ultimately tracked down and arrested. While credential […]
August 17, 2020 at 10:34 am
[…] need to be asked to the Government about this. Especially since the Canada Revenue Agency has been pwned before. Canadians need to hold the Canadian Government accountable for this and for making sure […]