back to article Whisky business: Uni of Edinburgh servers Irn-Scru'd by cyber-attack

The University of Edinburgh has gone offline from what appears to be a massive distributed denial-of-service attack on the campus network. As a result, the Scottish college's websites and wireless network gateways are down due to a flood of junk traffic during its first week of class. So far no student or faculty data is …

  1. monty75

    Website seems to be up again now.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Students vs the man

    Or in this case some poor underpaid IT interns vs some student testing his/her limits.

    1. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

      Re: Students vs the man

      @AC: "some poor underpaid IT interns vs some student testing his/her limits."

      Got this quite a bit when I worked for a University (Vax/VMS days),... a lot of wild claims and brags were made which were total BS,... but the odd enterprising little sod would find a pukka exploit every now and again. Like one who missed being able to send Internet email (this was a privilege only granted to select students back in the day, and we had an ACL for that) but he'd returned from a work placement, and had a copy of the CBS mail program from his employer, so ran his own version to send mail. I caught him, we actually became quite good friends, and he ended up managing the Students Union IT :-)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Secret trick for double speed internet in your dorm:

    Plug both ends of an ethernet cable into the wall, the third will have double speed!1!!

    (Yes, I know that's detected and fixed automatically at a fairly low ISO-OSI layer if your network equipment is less than 20 years old, and you dared make a config change to a working system to enable it once you were absolutely sure you removed the last equipment that didn't support it.)

    1. Korev Silver badge

      Re: Secret trick for double speed internet in your dorm:

      We had someone plug a D-link SoHo router in a few years ago with DHCP enabled, QIP crapped itself taking out the whole subnet...

  4. Korev Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    The school's supercomputing centre appears to not have been affected by the attack

    I'm pleased that's the case. A lot of Supercomputing centres are starting to handle lots of confidential patient data from sequencing etc. and it's good to have the systems isolated.

    1. hmv

      Um.

      A DDoS attack against a site isn't going to disclose confidential data.

      1. Is It Me

        The original poster didn't say that this attack would, just that it is nice to see that it is probably isolated from the main network.

        1. Korev Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking.

  5. iainr

    As a result, the Scottish college's websites and wireless network gateways are down due to a flood of junk traffic during its first week of class.

    It's Freshers week this week, classes don't start till next week.

  6. fords42

    Scottish college?

    Edinburgh University. The clue is in the name. Heathens.

    1. Velv
      Joke

      Re: Scottish college?

      Reminds me of the trick question in Blackadder IV where Blackadder asks Nurse Mary which of the three great Universities she’d been to, Oxford, Cambridge or Hull?

      It’s a trick question, obviously, as there are only two great universities. Oxford is a complete dump.

    2. agurney

      Re: Scottish college?

      "Edinburgh University. The clue is in the name. Heathens."

      Wrong. From the Uni's website:

      "The University of Edinburgh's academic structure is based on three Colleges containing a total of 20 Schools."

      - College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

      - College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine

      - College of Science & Engineering

      [ and, of course, with three colleges it means the apostrophe is in the wrong place "..the Scottish college's websites and wireless network gateways are down ]

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Scottish college?

        Leftpondians often generically say “college” where the rest of us would say “university” (where appropriate), but the “Colleges” referred to in the comments are what most of us would know as Faculties (rather than Oxbridge- or London-/Wales-style colleges).

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Scottish college?

      That’s “The University of Edinburgh” to you, “Edinburgh University” is deprecated.

      (Many phishing emails are good enough to follow the branding guidelines, unfortunately many staff still aren’t...!)

  7. knarf

    Dam it Janet where are you

    Rocky road ahead

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