Manitoba government website taken down by cyberattack

A person types on a laptop in a file photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, /Elise Amendola

The Manitoba government confirmed that there’s evidence to suggest that Thursday’s website outage was the result of a cyberattack.

In a statement, the province said  the outage that spanned most of Thursday was caused by "external activity."

"It would be accurate to describe this as a cyber attack, but there has been no ransom demand," a spokesperson wrote in a statement. "While there were no initial indications it was a deliberate attack, as the investigation progressed it was determined the outage had been caused by external activity."

The spokesperson said additional security measures have been added, and experts have been brought in to review safeguards.

“The province will continue to remain diligent and monitor the situation as it works to ensure no further interruptions of this nature occur,” the statement said.

At the time of the outage, the province said the interruption was “related to network and server infrastructure.”

The websites were back up by Friday morning.