Major DDos attack on universities over, few problems at UG (UPDATE)

All Dutch higher education institutions connected to the SURF network experienced either no internet or very slow connections on Thursday due to a large-scale DDoS attack targeting the SURF network.

The impact on the University of Groningen (UG) appears to be mainly limited to slower access to certain web services, according to spokesperson Anja Hulshof. ‘For example, logging into UG systems from home goes through the SURF network. People are encountering issues there. Everything is much slower’, she said.

A DDoS attack (distributed denial-of-service) floods a server or network with internet traffic, overwhelming it and causing it to become unresponsive.

Major attack

In a statement, SURF noted that this is a much larger DDoS attack than the ‘regular’ ones the network deals with on a daily basis. ‘The traffic is occurring at a point in our network where filtering is not (properly) possible’, the statement reads.

SURF reported Thursday that the DDoS attack stopped shortly after 2pm. The internet connections of organisations connected to the network were then available again.

Southern Netherlands

There was also a significant DDoS attack on the SURF network on Wednesday, primarily affecting institutions in the southern part of the country. The new attack began in the south on Thursday morning as well, according to SURF.

‘Research shows this is a different DDoS attack from yesterday, but it also involves an enormous volume of traffic’, the statement said. As a result, all institutions connected to the SURF network are affected on Thursday.

Second attack in a week

This marks the second time in a week that networks of Dutch higher education institutions have been targeted by cyber attacks. During the night from Saturday to Sunday, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) detected suspicious activities on its network.

As a precaution, TU/e shut down all its systems. The systems have remained offline all week, leaving many students and staff unable to access their study or research resources.

Caught red-handed

According to Eindhoven’s university magazine Cursor, the hackers were caught in the act. The university reportedly managed to thwart the attack in time. The hackers were unable to seize systems, encrypt files, or steal data. The university has also identified how the hackers accessed the system.

Eindhoven University expects all systems to be operational again by Monday.

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