Everyone,
Your network admins are probably aware of a major DNS
server attack between 3Z last night and 15Z this morning.
89 universities were reportedly targeted for the automated
rolling attacks, which caused major to full interruptions
of DNS service and resulting major network outages at these
institutions. The DoS is due to a flaw in BIND 9, but
a patch has been vetted and is now available as of this
afternoon to fix the flaw. NIU was not attacked, but we
don't want to crash and burn. Intelligence indicates
this might not be the last of the attacks, and it MIGHT
be a "dry" run for something bigger.
Tonight at 3Z, NIU will be applying that patch to one of our
two DNS servers; unfortunately, the second server requires
a vendor-made patch and may not be available for another day
or so. However, should the secondary server go down, we would
see only a modest slowdown in DNS service to our commodity
Internet and National Light Rail connections.
In any case, this will knock us offline for about 30 minutes,
and hopefully less, starting at 9 PM CST (3Z) tonight. Both
DNS servers will have to go offline, unfortunately. If, however,
you receive our feed via IP address, you should be OK.
Thanks for your patience,
Gilbert
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Gilbert Sebenste ********
(My opinions only!) ******
Staff Meteorologist, Northern Illinois University ****
E-mail: sebenste@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ***
web: http://weather.admin.niu.edu **
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/NIU_Weather **
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/niu.weather *
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