A decades-long scourge
A group sympathetic to the Iranian government has taken credit for the outage. According to posts on Telegram and other social media, the group is responsible for a DDoS attack using Beam, an operation that claims to test the ability of servers to operate under heavy loads but, like other “stressors,” are in fact fronts for services miscreants pay for to take down third-party sites. In recent days, the same pro-Iran group has taken credit for DDoSes on eBay.
According to a moderator on AskUbuntu.com, URLs that remained unavailable include:
- security.ubuntu.com
- jaas.ai
- archive.ubuntu.com
- canonical.com
- maas.io
- blog.ubuntu.com
- developer.ubuntu.com
- Ubuntu Security API – CVEs
- Ubuntu Security API – Notices
- academy.canonical.com
- ubuntu.com
- portal.canonical.com
- assets.ubuntu.com
Ubuntu and Canonical infrastructure went down hours after researchers released potent exploit code that allowed untrusted users in data centers, university settings, and elsewhere to gain all-powerful root control of servers running virtually all Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. The outage has limited Ubuntu’s ability to communicate security guidance to affected users. As noted earlier, updates remain available from mirror sites.
Stressor sites, also known as booter sites, have operated for decades. The DDoS-as-a-service operators have come under the attention of law enforcement in multiple countries, but attempts to shut down this scourge have never succeeded.
It’s unclear why the infrastructure has remained unavailable for so long. There’s a wealth of DDoS protection services, at least one of which is free. Senior Security Editor
Senior Security Editor
Dan Goodin is Senior Security Editor at Ars Technica, where he oversees coverage of malware, computer espionage, botnets, hardware hacking, encryption, and passwords. In his spare time, he enjoys gardening, cooking, and following the independent music scene. Dan is based in San Francisco. Follow him at here on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Contact him on Signal at DanArs.82.
