MyGov hit by cyber attack as tens of thousands of Australians seek help amid coronavirus pandemic

Krusty · Mar 22, 2020

The Federal Government has confirmed the MyGov website, which is used to access Centrelink services online, was hit by a denial of service cyber attack this morning.

A denial of service attack is where hackers flood a website with users, so that the site becomes overloaded.

It's the type of attack that was used to bring down the Census website in 2016.

Demand for MyGov services has risen dramatically, with many Australians who have been stood down due to extra coronavirus restrictions seeking access to unemployment benefits.

More to come.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03...entrelink-massive-queues-coronavirus/12080558

Krusty · Mar 23, 2020

MyGov website crashes as thousands seek Centrelink help amid coronavirus pandemic, Government backflips on claims cyber attack to blame

The Federal Government now says a cyber attack was not to blame for the MyGov website falling over this morning as thousands of Australians tried to access Centrelink payments amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Government Services Minister Stuart Robert told Parliament there was no evidence of an attack, mere hours after he claimed a distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyber hack had occurred.

The website crashed, and there were long lines outside Centrelink offices around the country, after the Federal Government announced it was closing down large parts of the economy in a bid to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Robert had claimed MyGov buckled under pressure under the twin impacts of the increased demand and the DDoS attack.

"More than 55,000 Australians [were] trying to access [the site] at the same time, as well as the issue we had with the denial of service attack," he said this morning.

He later pulled back on that claim in Parliament, and said the flood of people trying to access the site had triggered alarms which are activated when there is an DDoS attack.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03...entrelink-massive-queues-coronavirus/12080558

guest · Mar 23, 2020

The people of Australia are a DDoS machine that the government cannot handle
March 23, 2020
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-p...os-machine-that-the-government-cannot-handle/

Congratulations Australia, even in the most foreboding of times, we have found yet another way to highlight the incompetence of those that seek to rule, and also protect us from the harms of the coronavirus pandemic.

The latest setback for the Commonwealth government began on Monday morning, as its myGov portal crashed, and thousands of people queued to enter into Centrelink shopfronts around the nation.
Just after lunch, up stepped Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert to put forward the government's view on the outage.

"We've put a 10-fold increase on our digital channels over the weekend in preparation," Robert said directly before his cyber-revelation would appear
Before this weekend, the system was only capable of handling 6,000 concurrent requests. If you want some lockdown video conferencing fun this week, I'd suggest asking an enterprise systems architect to explain how such a system could serve 24.5 million people worried about their future and watch their face crumble before your eyes.
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People of Australia, you are a distributed force that can take down so-called enterprise systems like no other.
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guest · Mar 26, 2020

Morrison asks for patience as myGov tech is upgraded to handle new load
March 24, 2020
https://www.zdnet.com/article/morri...as-mygov-tech-is-upgraded-to-handle-new-load/

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday night asked the thousands of Australians now without a job to be patient in seeking assistance from the federal government.

"We are deeply sorry about this," Morrison said on Tuesday night.
"We've gone from 6,000 to 50,000 to 150,000 all in the space of, a matter of a day. And tonight, they're working to boost it again. I would say to Australians, yes, we are terribly sorry, but at the same time, we are asking Australians, even in these most difficult of circumstances, to be patient. Everyone is doing their best."
Morrison said what the world is dealing with is unprecedented and that no system was built to deal with the circumstances and events that everyone is now facing.
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MyGov hit by cyber attack as tens of thousands of Australians seek help amid coronavirus pandemic

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