back to article #Censusfail aftermath: Here's what's happening inside Australia's board rooms this morning

Oh to be a fly on the wall in the boardrooms of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) or IBM Australia today, after online census capture form the latter created for the former was taken down after unspecified attacks. We've been able to do the next-best thing, however, by asking some IT leaders of our acquaintance – folks …

  1. TReko
    FAIL

    Probably not a DDoS

    I don't think it was a DDoS.

    In the little time I could bother testing ABSs web pages, they showed all "stream" servers (likely just LPAR's on a single or small subset of Power Systems boxes) showed they were accepting new connections, but stalled on the TLS handshake after client hello - so probably starved of resources, not a DDoS

    Not sure what's behind it, but it looks like they only had 11 servers:

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Co-2565VMAAZeBq.jpg

    1. theblackhand
      FAIL

      Re: Probably not a DDoS

      Somewhere in a nameless government office:

      Idiot 1: What happened Dazza?

      Idiot 2: Not sure Trev

      Idiot 1: Can we just say it was some scary security bogeyman? No one would question that would they?

      Idiot 2: Good plan Dazza, lets google security issues

      Idiot 1: * googles * DDoS sounds scary Trev

      Idiot 2: Sure does Dazza, let's go with that

  2. Phil Kingston

    One hopes IBM's contract included some kind of refund for delivery failure so my tax dollars haven't just disappeared into their cloud.

  3. Trixr

    ASD*

    It hasn't been DSD for ages.

    1. Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

      Good point. My sources need to be better at naming agencies

    2. Frank Oz

      Mmmm ... but ASD or DSD they're still pretty pathetic in the security Sphere.

      I had some dealings with them about 20 years back - proposing a secure e-mail system for a government department. They rejected the solution on the basis that it was TOO SECURE. Because they couldn't crack it, it was unsuitable.

      I'm guessing the Census system went through the same rigorous security checks.

  4. Magani
    FAIL

    No communication between Federal and State?

    The Qld Gov't is suing IBM for the payroll debacle and has had the action going for 2.5 years.

    Did no one in federal government seek to take this as a hint?

    The old standard of 'No one gets fired for buying/using IBM' is sadly long gone.

    1. Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: No communication between Federal and State?

      Qld payroll was a monster mess, but inquiries found IBM was not wholly to blame. Government gave bad specs and let the meter run instead of controlling the project.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No communication between Federal and State?

        Qld payroll was a monster mess, but inquiries found IBM was not wholly to blame. Government gave bad specs and let the meter run instead of controlling the project.

        Guarantee that IBM made sure the meter kept running and that they didn't tell anyone about the "bad" specs.

        Been there

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: No communication between Federal and State?

          IBM has a payroll systems issue in Canada. IBM used to have the reputation of doing it right the first time.

          http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-pay-system-psac-campaign-1.3644351

          http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/phoenix-payroll-problems-fix-1.3683735

  5. Ole Juul

    just asking

    The vendors' leaders know they'll have to spend more time attempting to impress the likes of El Reg . . .

    How does one impress someone who bites your hand?

    1. Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: just asking

      Make your hand tasty

      1. Notas Badoff

        Re: just asking

        If the BBQ sauce is really good they just keep licking your fingers and asking for more.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To know the players is to know the game

    I've worked with some of the people that will undoubtedly be called in to paper over this mess, after picking them up on another blue-chip clusterf*ck.

    IBM is an empty shell. The "tough commercial environment" of the past few years has left them bereft of technical nous.The people who need experience don't have it, and the people who need to be dynamic aren't.

    When I came across these people on a mid-scale performance tuning gig, they had nothing to offer. Nothing at all - I was embarrassed for them.

  7. dan1980

    "The prime minister's office and Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) will be trying to craft a message in which they try to prove they took reasonable steps to secure the site and ensure its availability."

    If anyone seriously comes out and tries to get that to fly then that only proves that the ABS are unable to adequately assess the real threats and dangers that are arrayed with the goal of obtaining this new 'richer' and more 'valuable' data set they are hungry to build.

    It proves that, through ignorance, arrogance and incompetence, they have misjudged the security required to protect the information they are insisting we trust them with - and threatening to fine and prosecute us if we don't provide.

    I don't want 'reasonable' measures taken to protect my privacy; I want the correct measures taken.

  8. Tom 64
    Pint

    Break out the popcorn...

    The shitparade following this shitshow I going to be fun to watch

    1. dan1980

      Re: Break out the popcorn...

      @Tom 64

      Sadly, it is going to be the opposite: depressing.

      Here is what will happen: The ABS will continue their current strategy of arrogantly talking up their own infallibility and the (Liberal) politicians* will support them by attempting to gloss over the exceedingly worrying implications and by signing the praises of the ABS.

      Both will behave as though the community supports them and that concerns or opinions counter to their own are unfounded and adopt the 'trust us' stance, backed by the 'or else' of fines.

      A few inquiries will be undertaken but these will either absolve the ABS of any culpability (while likely talking-up the importance to what they do) or extend beyond the submission deadline and thus conveniently have zero impact on the current fiasco and provide an equal measure of protection for the people strong-armed into handing over their personal information to the ABS.

      In other words, the fall-out will be about the same as one sees when, say, the Victorian police are caught abusing their access to our records. I.e. - f$#k all.

      * - Besides being currently in government, they appointed Kalisch.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No way I will do this on line

    I've worked on a large IBM project, rules were no clear text over web.

    I kept getting requests for access to one of my oracle servers. Why? Answer came back "Well the requirements are that we must send everything to your server encrypted. Well we have no encryption running on our server so we wanted to send everything to you to get it encrypted so we could then send it back to you encrypted."

    WTF was my reply, you want to send it all in plan text across the web to me just to get it encrypted, The answer was "Yes". Again WTF what part about plain text over the web don't you understand!

    Anonymous for protection

  10. aberglas

    You cannot sue IBM

    The clever thing that IBM did for the Qld payroll system was to promise to fix everything and make the problem go away for the minster provided the government agreed never to sue them. And paid them even more money. And at the end of the day they sort of eventually got the nurses paid somehow.

    This is just business as usual. Except that this time the stuff up is more public. Normally the stuff ups are in backroom ERP systems that nobody sees.

    1. DainB Bronze badge

      Re: You cannot sue IBM

      Actually while everyone happy jumping on IBM blaming bandwagon consider the following.

      There was a tender and there probably was an average and maximum number of transaction system should be able to process in an hour in it. So the cost of system was based largely on these numbers, and we know that ABS was bragging about 1Mt/h which probably was maximum, so expected average would be 200Kt/h or similar.

      If IBM delivered exactly what was asked and system was hit with 5x of maximum capacity of legitimate traffic no one can withstand that, just literally no one. You can get new web servers online relatively easy but it's much harder to deal with database backend.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: You cannot sue IBM

        And if IBM delivered a system that makes ABS look bad, how does that make IBM look? Particularly if it wants to be a player in the cloud market.

        From what I understand, the peak load occurred on one day when the techies were expecting a busy period that lasted days (I believe the census has to be completed by September?) but this may not have been communicated to the general public very well, hence the 4-6 hour rush to get it done when combined with fines for not doing it.

        I know if this was AWS or Azure, and the system was built to scale, increasing capacity by adding more virtual hardware until your application limits (read database server limits in the apps I've dealt with) are reached is "simples" or at most a few more commands in your environment build scripts to add more front end servers/load balancers/caching servers/etc and be prepared for the hit on the credit card...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The IBM A-Team

    The vendor's leadership are now front and centre: project team members who still have a job are pushed into the background while the vendor pushes their A-Team into the limelight.

    With IBM, that's going to be a problem.

    A-Team members in an organisation are generally highly skilled + competent. However, that makes them expensive.

    IBM (including IBM Aust) has literally had wave after wave of firing these expensive, competent staff over the last decade, mostly offshoring to much less expensive, much less competent staff elsewhere.

    So, IBM's "A-Team" these days probably won't help much either.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another census

    "the ABS doesn't need another census"

    Are you sure about that? Most people I know are looking to use the current mess as an excuse not to complete this one. I predict another census within 2 years due to low response rates.

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