Canonical’s websites were disrupted last week by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, months after a larger attack hit the Ubuntu maker’s infrastructure.
The company confirmed the attack on October 8 in a post on the Ubuntu Discourse forum. “Canonical’s websites are under a sustained distributed denial of service attack,” the company said, adding that some services might not be reachable at times.
The disruption was limited to Canonical’s primary web properties, OMG! Ubuntu reported. These included ubuntu.com, canonical.com, the Ubuntu blog and developer site, and Ubuntu’s security advisory pages and API.
Developer-facing services such as Launchpad and the Snap Store did not appear to be affected.
Canonical said on October 9 that its team was still bringing affected services back, though most were accessible again. OMG! Ubuntu put the total downtime at a little over four hours.
The company has not publicly shared information on the size or origin of the cyberattack. No one appears to have taken credit for the DDoS attack.
Canonical was hit by a more disruptive attack in late April. Launchpad and the Snap Store were among the services taken down, and some users could not install Ubuntu updates. The company described that incident as a “sustained, cross-border attack.”
A hacktivist group calling itself The Islamic Cyber Resistance in Iraq – 313 Team claimed responsibility for that attack. It’s unclear whether the two incidents are connected.
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