The canada411.ca website stopped working for several days… and it wasn't because of the power outages

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The canada411.ca telephone website was hit by a major outage lasting several days, which has just been fixed. The subsidiary of the Pages Jaunes group was reportedly the target of a ransom-demanding cyberattack, which blocked access to its website.

“It was a ransomware attack that happened at the end of March,” a source familiar with the situation, who is not authorized to speak to the media, told us.

This attack is the latest in a series that has affected the companies Indigo and Sobeys in particular in recent months.

The hackers would have sought to steal the personal data of the subsidiary's customers from Pages Jaunes, which places the company in a delicate situation.

According to our information, the theft of the data and the precise amount of the ransom have still not been confirmed.

The parent company, Yellow Pages, which has more than 125,000 client companies in Canada and more than 20 millions of users of its research site is not its first mishap. In 2019, she was forced to inform her customers that she had been the target of a data theft.

Law not strong enough

Called for comment, Yellow Pages senior vice president and chief financial officer Franco Sciannamblo told us the company has been experiencing technical issues since late March, without specifying. 

“The company certainly fears the negative repercussions for its shareholders, because it is listed on the stock exchange”, believes Steve Waterhouse, specialist in cybersecurity.

The attack was not made public by the company .

“Companies are not obliged to inform the Commission d'accès à l'information (CAI) when they have suffered a cyberattack, but only confidentiality incidents that represent a serious risk”, he specifies. /p>

According to data provided by the CAI, only 24 companies have reported being the target of ransomware since September 22, 2022.

Also in Australia

“However, this is not a representative number, since the Commission receives the declarations on a voluntary basis”, specifies Emmanuelle Giraud, head of media relations at the CAI.

The takeover of the Yellow Pages subsidiary comes at the same time as the vast police operation carried out by various police agencies around the world against cyber hackers. However, there would be no link between the two.

Piloted by the FBI, it had allowed the closure of the Genesis Market site, where profiles of victims whose data had been subtilized. The Sûreté du Québec and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police took part in the operation, which notably led to the arrest of six people in Québec.

Our checks also enabled us to confirm that the site Yellow Pages Australia had been down since the end of March.

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