CAO Website Attacked

mike73

i swear it wasnt me that did it :rolleyes:

aidan_walsh

Chaotic_Forces wrote: »

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?

Actually no.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_kiddie

Craguls

Sensationalism.

CAO crashed several times the week before the deadline last year. Wasn't a denial of service attack then was it?

evercloserunion

Every year another fecking scandal about the CAO website going down. Would it really be that hard to maintain the website properly. Upgrade the server or just replace whoever is supposed to be keeping it up and running because someone or something is not doing what they're supposed to be doing.

It'd be one thing if this was a freak happening, because sh*t happens. But it's happened several times before IIRC.

Chaotic_Forces

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Actually no.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_kiddie

I meant how the talks will be about the kids drinking themselves stupid and unable to afford a computer that did it.

Well this was apparently worthy of front page headline in the herald.

I chuckled as i read, the ip address kept changing making it impossible to trace the hacker.

Lol more like 50,000 kids tying to see if they have got into college. Cant imagine there infrastructure being that great at all.

But then again they can get away with that excuse as it sounds viable to 99%.

R0ot

Metro this morning mentioned something like 20,000 connections caused the "DoS Attack" hmmm how many students did the leaving again? :rolleyes:

syklops

R0ot wrote: »

Metro this morning mentioned something like 20,000 connections caused the "DoS Attack" hmmm how many students did the leaving again? :rolleyes:

57,839 Leaving Certificate candidates will get their results this morning.
Of these, 51,279 are school-leavers, 3,737 are external candidates and 2,823 are repeat candidates.
Overall, 38,885 sat the established Leaving Certificate, 15,596 sat the Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme and 3,358 sat the Leaving Certificate Applied programme.

Source: http://www.irishdigest.com/?p=9995

syklops

syklops wrote: »

Source: http://www.irishdigest.com/?p=9995

Thats one sophisticated Botnet alright

yoyo

The Central Applications Office website is now fully accessible after the 'my application' section was shut down for four hours today.

CAO Operations Manager Joseph O'Grady said the system was closed down because of a malicious attack on the password facility by 'an unknown source'.

Mr O'Grady said: 'The system was closed for four hours until 3pm while our IT team assessed the site.
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'Again, we apologise sincerely to anyone who was inconvenienced and thank them for their patience and understanding as we manage these malicious attacks.

'However, we would like to reassure applicants that no application accounts were accessed and that the new passwords received from the CAO today are safe and secure and should be used until further notice. CAO will email all applicants new passwords and an update today.

'We closed down the interactive part of the website to investigate what happened, and at this stage, we do not believe that applicant accounts have been accessed or that any data has been changed.

'It may not be possible to tell exactly where the attack or attacks are coming from as false internet protocol (IP) addresses are routinely used in such attacks.'

He said students can also post their acceptances to the CAO.

The deadline for accepting first round offers is 30 August at 5.15pm.

Mr O'Grady said that 26,891 acceptances have been made online since Monday morning.

Source: http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0825/cao.html
It went down again today :rolleyes:

Nick

I_AmThe_Walrus

Why must everything in Ireland be so amateur?

I've clicked onto that website and it looks like something a child could put together using geocities...

STBR

Anything know if the passwords are hashed?

Nothing would surprise me. :rolleyes:

distraction

Ah painful memories of tryin to use that piece of carp web site..........gud times

Lemsiper

salthillman wrote: »

Apparently it was hacked by 18 year olds....

Damn year olds are getting so advanced these days.

Adriatic

They sent out password changes. I remember my guidance counsellor said to the whole year group not to set a password in case you forget it and now everyone has one whether they like it or not, not that anyone would even care to log in to your account.

j.mcdrmd

Apparently the CAO have now given "evidence of the malicious attack" to Gardai.

If they have actual evidence fair enough.

If not, the Gardai will have to spend a lot of time investigating, e.g. getting IP addresses from all over the world only to discover that the "attackers" are actually people who have paid up to a service and actually expect it to work.

That is going to take a long time and is a waste of resources. Is this not a waste of taxpayers money?