Day 2: UK research network Janet still being slapped by DDoS attack

DNS services appear to be targeted, switching may work

Members of UK's academic community from freshers to senior academics are facing more connection issues today as a persistent and continuous DDoS attack against the academic computer network Janet continues to stretch resources.

Janet first came under a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack yesterday, and the same attack has continued through to today forcing much of the academic community offline.

Initially, Jisc's engineers and security teams identified the cause as a DDoS attack and worked to identify the source of the assault and implement blocks. However, after some suggestions of network stabilisation, further problems were seen.

Janet reported that it would cease providing updates on its Twitter page following the attack, as the information seemed to be providing the attackers with hints about how to adjust their attacks.

For those who find Janet's DNS services sluggish to respond, it may be possible to work around the issue by switching to Google Europe's DNS.

Boffins from various field have somehow managed to take to Twitter to share their woes about the outage.

I feel so tech savvy now that @martin_costello & @benjiisnotcool have explained to me what a DDOS is & who Janet is. https://t.co/ucIqzbgKH3

— Matt Jay (@mattjaywhy) December 8, 2015

Someone DDoS attacking JANET, the network for universities across the UK, is fairly serious. https://t.co/zgZ7otCNBc https://t.co/dB1Fm0Qp6N

— Christopher Kissane (@ChrisKissane) December 8, 2015

I am in a law library and have to consult a hard copy of the law reports for the first time ever because of the DoS attack on UK Unis

— Harry Langford (@HarryLangford) December 8, 2015

Vision and Office 365 are also being reported as offline.

The Register understands no ransom notice has been delivered to Jisc as of writing. DDoS-for-ransom attacks are almost always preceded by the ransom request, as an early payment saves the attackers money. ®