MONTREAL - Two provincial government websites as well as the site for the governing Quebec Liberal Party went down early Saturday morning and remained inaccessible for most of the day.

No one has claimed responsibility for the downed sites but Twitter was full of rumours on Saturday pointing to Anonymous, the loose group of cyber activists.

The Anonymous Twitter feed has been highly critical of the Quebec government's emergency legislation, called Bill 78, which became law Friday night.

The law bans spontaneous protests in Quebec and imposes heavy fines on anyone attempting to prevent students from entering classrooms.

One of Anonymous' Twitter accounts tweeted on Friday: "Quebec Considers Draconian Anti-Protest Law ... Expect us."

Another one read: "Rule 78 must die ... Disobey!"
The spokeswoman for Quebec's education minister said the website for the education department and the site featuring information on loans and bursaries get shut down every weekend. Kimberly Labar said the pre-emptive shut down is a way to prevent repeated attacks on the government's system.

A spokesman for the Quebec Liberal Party said the party's site was hacked.

"They are attacks that are pretty common," said Michel Rochette. "We have been victims of (cyber-attacks) for the past few weeks."

The Liberal's site was back up on Saturday afternoon but the two government sites were still down as of 5 p.m.

QMI Agency reported that the education ministry's website was hacked on April 19 and that the Liberal Party's site was hacked on April 13.