Australian Census 2016 Disrupted By DDoS Attacks

Australians took to Twitter to let the Australian Bureau of Statistics know about its #CensusFail, however, the source of website woes was a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks.

ABS asked its citizens to fill out Census 2016 data on Aug. 9, but participants started complaining about not being able to reach the site, slow load times and form submission problems, according to CNET.

Though early media reports said the site had been hacked, ABS later posted that “Reviews by IBM, [Australian Signals Directorate] and ABS have confirmed that this was not a hack – no Census data was compromised.”

Instead, the Census site was hit with four separate DDoS attacks, which is when multiple systems flood a target to overwhelm its systems.

ASD is continuing its investigation.