DDoS hits Vocus ! 🇦🇺

Internet infrastructure provider Vocus has confirmed it was hit with a DDoS attack which took its internet down. Afer a widespread outage affecting a number of companies including Spark, Vodafone, Slingshot and Orcon.

A DDoS attack is where attackers try to disrupt the normal traffic to an internet service, server, or network. The aim is to hinder access, and stop people from getting to the services they need.

The attacks work by flooding a website with fake requests, exceeding its capacity. That means normal, legitimate, requests can’t get through. Same happened last year in NZX last year.

Reports of outages came in from all over the country, but mostly in the North Island, including Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington. Users in Christchurch and Dunedin also reported being affected. Vocus owns Orcon, Slingshot and Flip and provides a dedicated service for large corporate clients.

Mitigation has been in place to reduce the impact, no current service disruption has been reported to VSC, we will continue to monitor the services and provide updates. Chorus and Slingshot also said they were aware of the issue and apologised to customers.