A distributed denial of service attack forced an outage of ASU Internet and Wi-Fi access causing access problems Thursday night and into Friday, ASU Chief Information Officer Gordon Wishon said in an email.
A distributed denial of service, known as a DDoS, is malware designed to overload a shared server by flooding the network with data on the shared network. The malware can cause the system to stop responding to legitimate inquiries, slowing down or stopping access for other users.
The outage began around 9 p.m. on Thursday and lasted until about 10:30 p.m., Wishon said.
In the email sent to all of ASU, Wishon said three machines within the ASU network were located and removed from the ASU network about an hour and a half after the malware attack started.
Some students were reminded of a similar attack in 2012, where users’ passwords and information were targeted and the system was shut down, and it took students days to regain access after changing passwords.
Archaeology senior Kea Warren said she was troubled by the notification of the attack because the email sent to the student body was vague and she did not know if she needed to worry about her online information being secure.
“It really freaks me out,” Warren said. “I’m incredibly paranoid about my finances. I don’t really know how it works, but I think that’s the problem. I don’t really know what could happen to my information or where it could potentially be. I think right now I’m more afraid than I would be if I knew exactly what the malware was targeting.”
Warren said she was a freshman when the January 2012 hack happened, and remembered having to worry about her financial information.
“I had to cancel my debit card after that, because I had information in my ASU email, and I wasn’t sure if it had been accessed or not,” she said. “I thought it would be better to be safe than sorry. This time, I don’t think I will cancel any of my cards, unless we get notified that anything was actually stolen.”
Psychology senior Margaret Rich said she was also a freshman when the 2012 hack happened. She said she was more paranoid about missing class assignments and grades during that outage, which lasted for several days.
“I’m really glad they caught it quickly this year,” Rich said. “Last time, teachers had to move deadlines and other things, so it really messed with my schedule. As far as I know, none of my classes were affected by the outage. I didn’t even know about it until after it happened.”
Rich said she worries about her finances, especially on a large network like ASU.
“I’m super careful with my bank information and scholarship money,” Rich said. “But all of that is tied to my online account, so if someone gets access to that, I could potentially be in a lot of financial trouble. It’s hard because I am really careful personally, but I have to trust ASU to also be careful with my finances.”
Reach the reporter at cvanek@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @CorinaVanek.
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