iiNet hit by DDoS; Have your say on ACMA review; BlackBerry fuels Android phone rumours

ISP iiNet has been forced to fend off a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that cut off services for some of its users, according to ITnews.

Multiple iiNet users posted about a loss of services to the broadband forum Whirlpool forum on Saturday. Complaints included iiNet’s Toolbox service being unavailable, POP email being down and interruptions to general web browsing.

“Toolbox, main page and email all not working here in Perth. What is going on?” one user posted.

“Looks like the DNS is having problems too, having to VPN out to simply browse sites,” another said.

iiNet reps posting on Whirlpool acknowledged on Saturday that there was an issue, with one saying “we have multiple internal and customer tools offline”.

Some users suggested that the ISP was being attacked with a large-scale DDoS. While the iiNet reps stayed away from the malicious-sounding term “DDoS”, one acknowledged late Saturday night that the outage was “due to a large volume of external traffic directed towards iiNet Group services”.

“I can ensure you our mitigation strategy is continuing to evolve as we engage with this issue,” one of the reps added.

Early Sunday morning, an iiNet rep posted on Whirlpool stating that the company’s engineers had restored access to the iiNet website, customer portal and webmail services. But by Sunday afternoon a rep posted saying the issue had re-occurred.

The problem seems to have continued into the week, with the official iiNet fault notice indicating it was ongoing until at least Tuesday evening.

The notice said that DNS, email, customer tools and company tools had been restored on Wednesday morning.

Have your say on ACMA review

The Department of Communications is now accepting public submissions on its review into the future of ACMA (Australia Communications and Media Authority).

The department has also released an issues paper on the topic, which it suggests commenters read when composing a submission.

In the department’s own words, taken from the issues paper, “The purpose of the review is to examine the objectives, functions, structure, governance and resource base of the ACMA to ensure it remains fit-for-purpose for both the contemporary and future communications regulatory environment.

“The ACMA review will also incorporate the broad requirements of the Government’s Contestability Programme and Regulator Performance Framework to assess the efficiency of the ACMA and its administration of communications laws and regulations.”

The issues paper addresses five main areas of discussion: the communications sector in Australia; what a “future-focused” communications regulator should look like; the regulatory performance of ACMA; the efficiency of ACMA; and reforms in communications regulatory framework being considered by the government.

Submissions on the ACMA review are due by 10 August 2015. More information on the submissions process is available at the Communications Department’s website.

BlackBerry Android rumours

BlackBerry has reportedly purchased several domain names related to the Android mobile OS, fuelling rumours that it plans to create a smartphone based on the operating system.

According to news service Reuters, BlackBerry purchased the domain names ‘AndroidSecured.com’ and ‘AndroidSecured.net’ last week.

Smartphone gossips the world over had already been speculating about an Android-powered BlackBerry device for some time, and the domain purchases heightened the fever of the speculation, with multiple news sites reporting that the registrations “confirmed” that the rumours were true.

According to Reuters, BlackBerry downplayed the significance of the domains. The smartphone company told the news service: “BlackBerry frequently registers domain names to support the breadth of our cross-platform portfolio. Android is an important part of our cross-platform enterprise software strategy.”

The rumours were also bolstered last week by the announcement that the latest version of BlackBerry’s enterprise mobility management (EMM) solution, BES12 version 12.2, includes support for Android for Work.

BlackBerry provided some detail on the Android support: “BES12 seamlessly integrates with the Android OS to enable platform-level containerization, creating dedicated profiles for corporate and personal information. This eliminates the need for app wrapping and provides users with access to any Android application available on Google Play that is permitted by an organization’s IT policies.”

Image courtesy of Vernon Chan under CC