[AusNOG] census issues tonight

[Mark Andrews]

In message <011AA222-4E76-4E0E-998E-024B02F20991 at atdot.dotat.org>, Mark Newton writes:
>
> On Aug 10, 2016, at 10:03 AM, James Braunegg
> <james.braunegg at micron21.com> wrote:
> > If you look on public peering exchanges around the world for an
> abnormal increase of traffic during last night, you don’t see any such
> increase, nor any evidence.
>
> I’m very skeptical of a DDoS.
>
> The ABS said last week that everything was fine because they load tested
> the site for 1 million submissions per hour which is a really big number
> so we’re cool, right?
>
> Based on the population of Australia and the likely desire to submit
> between 7pm and 9pm, they needed about double that for average load.
> Probably four times or more for bursty peaks.
>
> They screwed the capacity planning. 1 million submissions per hour is
> tiny-skinny, there’s no way that that’d be good enough.

There are ~2.1 persons per household so we are looking at 10-11
million submissions total.  They took in about 1/5th of the total
submissions before they shutdown.  I don't think the capacity
planning was that far off the mark.

> I think the “DDoS” was ten million households all visiting the census
> site and attempting to submit. Horrible nasty hackers, if only they knew
> better.
>
>   - mark

-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: marka at isc.org