CAO Website Attacked

allanb49

CAO website blocked by malicious attack
listen Monday, 23 August 2010 11:12

The CAO website containing offers of college places for students has crashed because of a malicious attack.

The CAO says the attack is coming from an unknown, malicious, source. It has urged students not to panic, reminding them that the deadline for accepting places is a week away.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0823/cao.html

Cruel for the people who are trying to see if they got in.

Biggins

Bad form.

R0ot

I think this is someone over exaggerating, I seem to remember the CAO site suffering every year, probably just couldn't take the load of people going on to it at once.

More than likely the server fees were another "unnecessary expense" for our government. :mad:

Sticky_Fingers

Pretty bad alright, Joe Duffy is going to have a field day with this, might even try and get the internet banned since some scummer decides to act the maggot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh2sWSVRrmo

mailforkev

Attacked my arse.

The only thing it was attacked by was typical shoddy Irish planning. Someone is too cheap to upgrade their server.

R0ot

Maintenance Notice

Due to maintenance work, the CAO web site is currently unavailable.
We apologise for the inconvenience.

RTE jumping the gun as expected.

mikom

allanb49 wrote: »

The CAO website containing offers of college places for students has crashed because of a malicious attack.

The CAO says the attack is coming from an unknown, malicious, source.

It shall be named the "bank black hole virus"
Who do they think they are coddin'?

Captain Darling

Its a malicious attack by thousands of students logging on to see did they get their place in college.

Typical. :rolleyes:

Nijmegen

Yeash, government body has to do one thing all year and...

ejmaztec

Some nerds would have the motive, given that the nerd points were upped this time round.

If you can't join em, beat em.

mikemac

Happens every year, last night I was reading posts on how the server would crash this morning.

Tens of thousands of students are trying to access it as the same time.

syklops

Listening to an "expert" on it on the radio now. The rubbish he is coming out with.

Some Gob****e cyber attacked them

Apparently the site went down, they rebooted it, and the "cyber-attacker" hacked them again.

I wonder.

Still no actual details, just that the site is down. Ironic the site goes down every year but this year its not because they didn't get a decent server, its because of an evil hacker.

I cant make a :rolleyes: big enough.

TheZohanS

Username: Admin

Password: Admin



Click here to turn off site: [ ]

mikom

syklops wrote: »

Listening to an "expert" on it on the radio now. The rubbish he is coming out with.

Listened to another expert on the news myself.
"Take a few deep breaths children, go and buy the paper and check up the points that way"

Yaay, knowledge economy.

PeterIanStaker

Wouldnt it be ironic if the points for Web Design went down?

syklops

http://www.cao.ie/apply.php?page=myapp

I have to say, I dont have much confidence in any site whose web application is called: "myapp".

:rolleyes:

Nerdiest thing i've heard ina while.

Kimono-Girl

TheZohan wrote: »

Username: Admin

Password: Admin



Click here to turn off site: [ ]

ahhh give them some credit the password is more likely to be :Admin1

Gary4279

got to see my offer this morning (got my 1st choice), went to accept and the whole thing went. :P maybe i broke it :P

PeterIanStaker

candlelover wrote: »

ahhh give them some credit the password is more likely to be :Admin1

ye know nothing!

the password is "password"

Voodu Child

Anybody who has logged on to the CAO website today has almost certainly contracted a deadly computer virus that could potentially allow hackers to take control of your computer and blow it up.

The only way to delete this virus is to remove the HDD from your computer and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds. This will reset your computer to the factory settings.

Krieg

Voodu Child wrote: »

Anybody who has logged on to the CAO website today has almost certainly contracted a deadly computer virus that could potentially allow hackers to take control of your computer and blow it up.

The only way to delete this virus is to remove the HDD from your computer and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds. This will reset your computer to the factory settings.

What about deleting system 32 folder?

deandean

Reminds me of Eirkom complaining a few months ago of Denial of Service cyber attacks - I heard later is was simply that their infrastructure couldn't handle the traffic.

allanb49

Gary4279 wrote: »

got to see my offer this morning (got my 1st choice), went to accept and the whole thing went. :P maybe i broke it :P

Divided by zero eh?

syklops

Voodu Child wrote: »

Anybody who has logged on to the CAO website today has almost certainly contracted a deadly computer virus that could potentially allow hackers to take control of your computer and blow it up.

The only way to delete this virus is to remove the HDD from your computer and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds. This will reset your computer to the factory settings.

Good advice there from Voodu Child, although I recommend leaving it in the microwave for a minute. Just to be sure the nasty viruses are destroyed. Stay safe kids!

Voodu Child

syklops wrote: »

Good advice there from Voodu Child, although I recommend leaving it in the microwave for a minute. Just to be sure the nasty viruses are destroyed. Stay safe kids!

Yeah, it depends really. The 30 seconds suggestion was for a 1000W microwave. If yours is only 800W or 600W then adjust the time to suit.

bleg

Consequences will never be the same...

Tucking Fypo

Could it have been our resident hacker? TOS. *

*Hope you can mention him around these parts.

a_l_a_n

Is there and legislation in this country about "cyber-attacks"? Or do the CAO TOS just say you cant launch DDoS on us?

Chorcai

PeterIanStaker wrote: »

Wouldnt it be ironic if the points for Web Design Computing went down?

Web design has feck all really to do with networks/servers/hosting etc

OT: And we paid €45.

ixoy

Yeah, I'm a bit curious about the DoS notice: "Hey lads, typically we only get 4-5 hits a day in the last few months! Today we suddenly got thousands of hits! Must be one of those deny-us-our-service attacks that ya hear about."

syklops

a_l_a_n wrote: »

Is there and legislation in this country about "cyber-attacks"? Or do the CAO TOS just say you cant launch DDoS on us?

Er... Its complicated.

Good discussion here:

http://www.tjmcintyre.com/2009/07/eircom-hacking-shows-flaws-in-irish.html

Mark200

I don't think it's completely unbelievable that the site got attacked... if there was ever a day to do it, it'd be today.

Mmcd

a_l_a_n wrote: »

Is there and legislation in this country about "cyber-attacks"? Or do the CAO TOS just say you cant launch DDoS on us?

I'm pretty sure whoever is doing it isn't at home just hitting f5. It'd be the whole owning or hiring a botnet that'd get you in trouble!

syklops

Mark200 wrote: »

I don't think it's completely unbelievable that the site got attacked... if there was ever a day to do it, it'd be today.

Its not completely unbelieveable, but it goes down nearly every year when the results come out. This report of it being hacked or DoS'ed seems strange and a bit suspicious to me.

Dyr

Why are my taxes going into letting those f***ing students check their results from home? :mad::mad::mad:

leg

Bambi wrote: »

Why are my taxes going into letting those f***ing students check their results from home? :mad::mad::mad:

We're accepting college places not checking results and im sure its alot cheaper and cost effective to do things online these days

syklops

Bambi wrote: »

Why are my taxes going into letting those f***ing students check their results from home? :mad::mad::mad:

No wonder child and teenage obesity is on the rise.

warrenaldo

Its back up!

DingosAteMyBaby

Bambi wrote: »

Why are my taxes going into letting those f***ing students check their results from home? :mad::mad::mad:

Firstly, students pay the CAO for the service.

Secondly, accepting places online is probably the cheapest and most efficient method available...

Dyr

DingosAteMyBaby wrote: »

Firstly, students pay the CAO for the service.

Secondly, accepting places online is probably the cheapest and most efficient method available...

Nonsense, Making students go around each college with a begging bowl is far cheaper

ixoy

Bambi wrote: »

Nonsense, Making students go around each college with a begging bowl is far cheaper

Plus it's presumably far more emotionally satisfying for the college staff to then spit in their bowls, laugh at them, and slam the door in their faces than it would be to send a formalised "No" through the site. It's important to consider these human touches, which can get lost in this digital age.

Stercus Accidit

Heres a neat trick, call up RTE and pose as an expert/security consultant/hacker

Tell them the following,

Someone put the hard disk where the floppy disk goes, and the floppy disk where the hard disk goes.


RTE pays you 500 euro for saying that

bette

candlelover wrote: »

ahhh give them some credit the password is more likely to be :Admin1

Maybe

Username: Admin
Password: Password

gahsux

The website appears to be running Microsoft-IIS/6.0. Never a good idea.

wingnut

The buttons are lifted straight from the Joomla CMS.

Mark200

wingnut wrote: »

The buttons are lifted straight from the Joomla CMS.

So?

Morlar

R0ot wrote: »

I think this is someone over exaggerating, I seem to remember the CAO site suffering every year, probably just couldn't take the load of people going on to it at once.

Every year it goes down and the headlines say 'CAO Servers can not handle the volume', . . . . . . every year they promise it is fixed for next year. This year it's 'CAO down because they were victims of attack !!!'

Dermighty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-PII2rSLVo

Chaotic_Forces

Anyone else think it's ironic that it'll be blamed on kids who have no fecking idea how to use a computer but can clearly DDoS a site?

allanb49

I just saw the news with the "expert" i have not laughed so hard,

This kind of attack is not for fiancial or political it's pure vandilism, Tens of thousands of computers attacked the site today.

I call bullshít