STE WILLIAMS

Publicly-funded academic computer network Janet has come under a persistent DDoS attack today, which hobbled multiple internet connections, including the Manchester to Manchester Core Router.

Janet, effectively the UK’s computer network for educational and research institutions, first experienced connectivity problems shortly after 9am this morning.

Its engineers and security teams identified the cause as a DDoS attack and worked to identify the source of the assault and implement blocks.

After some suggestions of network stabilisation however, further problems were seen.

The network is funded by Jisc, formerly the Joint Information Systems Committee, a non-departmental public body in the UK, whose Major Incidents Twitter account provided the most recent updates:

#TT169554 – We suspect that those behind today’s DDOS attack are adjusting their point of attack based on our twitter updates.

— Jisc Major Incidents (@jiscmi) December 7, 2015

#TT169554 – We will not be updating this or our status page. Apologies to our customers. Updates will still be provided through our TTs.

— Jisc Major Incidents (@jiscmi) December 7, 2015

At the time of writing the tactic is yet to have any great effect, with 35 connections down, according to Netsight. While mostly facility specific, the Manchester to Manchester Core Router backbone connection is also down.

Following our publication, Jisc send The Register a statement confirming that:

“On Monday 7 December at 9.24 a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack caused unplanned disruption on the Janet network. This has resulted in a potentially intermittent service for all customers.

Our network and computer security incident response teams are currently working to resolve the problem.

Customers affected have been contacted and are being provided with up to date information.”

So there we have it. ®

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Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/07/janet_under_persistent_ddos_attack/