UPDATE: possible network issues following DDoS attack on SURF network

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.

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/.