Canada's recruiting website for the armed forces was hacked on Thursday, and its homepage where applications are dropped off was re-directed to China's government homepage.

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According to a report by the Canadian Press, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the investigations are still ongoing and any new information with regard to the incident will be shared to the media.

"When something of this nature happens, we treat it with real gravity and we will investigate it," Goodale said. "That process is underway right now and as soon as we know the facts we will be commenting further."

The spokeswoman for Canada's Department Of National Defense Ashley Lemire, on the other hand, also confirmed the incident.

"The Canadian Armed Forces Recruiting website was on Thursday hacked," she said. "Would-be recruits were redirected to the Chinese government's homepage."

In her remarks, she also added that the incident, which had been active for a while, led to the website being closed until the error was sorted. They later addressed the incident on their Twitter handle.

"The CAF (Canadian Armed Forces) website is temporarily offline. We are looking into it and will keep you updated," read the tweet.

Goodale in his remarks later added that such a breach is a cause of concern generally because the size of the damage it might have caused is unknown.

"You are concerned about the information that may be on the system," he said. "It might be either tampered with, contaminated or illegitimately released."

The incident triggered a great worry about whether the Canadian government was safe in matters to do with technology and if they stood a chance in case of a cyber attack.

Tagschina, Canada, cybersecurity, Canada Ministry of Defense