HomeEducationStudent Services/ContactNews & eventsNews for studentsUPDATE: possible network issues following DDoS attack on SURF network

UPDATE: possible network issues following DDoS attack on SURF network

Since Thursday, several educational institutions, including UT, are experiencing technical issues due to various DDoS attacks on the SURF network. See also the news about this on SURF's website. These issues manifest themselves, for example, in the slowness of the network - both VPN and Eduroam.

SURF is taking various actions to minimise the impact of the attacks. As UT, we are closely monitoring developments and are constantly looking at what is needed to protect our systems.

Be prepared

Given that the attacks may be ongoing, it is important to be prepared for any continuing or worsening effects. For instance, make sure that you also continue to access documents that you will need for your studies and work in the coming period, should access to the online environment be unavailable. This can be done by storing them locally on your own PC.

What you can do to keep our systems safe
10-step plan

We will keep you informed of the situation on the website and service portal. In case our website is also offline, you may find updates on www.utwente-is-offline.nl.

Below you will find the news updates that we have published on this topic earlier.

Update Friday 17 January, 10.20 am

It appears that the attacks will continue for some time, and inconvenience may continue today. If more specific information is available on the impact, we will update this post.

News item Thursday 16 January 11.00 am

Since 8:30 this morning, like other universities, we have noticed slow internet connections to e.g. websites and coffee machines. Our internet provider (SURF) suffers from a DDoS attack on their network. A DDoS (Distributed-Denial-of-Service) attack involves attacking the capacity of online services or the supporting servers and network equipment, which can lead to overloading. The result of this attack on SURF is that online services (such as websites) are poorly accessible or not accessible at all.

Yesterday, similar attacks on the SURF network also took place.

Again, the attack seems to target the south of the Netherlands, but due to the large amount of traffic, other points in the network are also burdened, so you may experience impact as delays and/or short interruptions. For example, Eduroam and VPN may have limited availability.

SURF is trying to solve the problem as soon as possible. They have published a news item about the situation on their website. At UT, we are also monitoring the situation closely, are in contact with colleagues at SURF and other institutions and are taking additional measures if necessary.

As soon as new information becomes available, we will inform you via the website and service portal. We also keep the maintenance calendar up-to-date when we receive new reports, which can be found at https://www.utwente.nl/en/intranet/status/.

L.P.W. van der Velde MSc (Laurens)
Spokesperson Executive Board (EB)
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