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This is a problem every time the government launches a new service. They always have "an unexpected amount of traffic". The last time we had a census the "cens

by deevus 8y ago

This is a problem every time the government launches a new service. They always have "an unexpected amount of traffic". The last time we had a census the "census night" was totally bust since the majority of Australian internet users tried to use the online form and hardly anyone succeeded. They tried to blame it on "hackers". Leading up to census night there were threats of fines if you didn't submit on time, but due to the shitstorm with their online failures people were still submitting their census data months later.

lucb1e 8y ago
There are plenty of projects that don't have this issue. It's not "always", just the big ones so it seems like it's all of them if you don't know about the others.
SyneRyder 8y ago
The census fiasco was a truly special kind of incompetence. The best inside analysis was from the folks behind the Risky Business infosec podcast: https://risky.biz/censusfail/ https://risky.biz/censusfail/ Summary: The project was outsourced to IBM (that alone probably says it all), who didn't purchase any DDoS protection. A small attack crashed the first firewall, and the backup firewall didn't have rules loaded. That caused IBM's monitoring tools to flag system logs as exfiltration, so they called in the Australian Signals Directorate (ie national security) and turned everything off until intelligence agencies completed an investigation of the false positive.
- Namidairo 8y ago
  All the marketing calling it "Census night" and encouraging people to do it on the same evening instead of over the week probably didn't help spreading the load out.
  - halchion 8y ago
    Furthermore, although it's true that IBM didn't purchase DDOS protection, neither did the government pay them to purchase it. IBM is incompetent but in this particular case I can't blame them for attempting to make a meager profit out of the pittance the Australian government chose to spend on their first act of digital governance.

by deevus 8y ago

lucb1e 8y ago

There are plenty of projects that don't have this issue. It's not "always", just the big ones so it seems like it's all of them if you don't know about the others.

SyneRyder 8y ago

The census fiasco was a truly special kind of incompetence. The best inside analysis was from the folks behind the Risky Business infosec podcast: https://risky.biz/censusfail/ https://risky.biz/censusfail/ Summary: The project was outsourced to IBM (that alone probably says it all), who didn't purchase any DDoS protection. A small attack crashed the first firewall, and the backup firewall didn't have rules loaded. That caused IBM's monitoring tools to flag system logs as exfiltration, so they called in the Australian Signals Directorate (ie national security) and turned everything off until intelligence agencies completed an investigation of the false positive.

Namidairo 8y ago
All the marketing calling it "Census night" and encouraging people to do it on the same evening instead of over the week probably didn't help spreading the load out.
- halchion 8y ago
  Furthermore, although it's true that IBM didn't purchase DDOS protection, neither did the government pay them to purchase it. IBM is incompetent but in this particular case I can't blame them for attempting to make a meager profit out of the pittance the Australian government chose to spend on their first act of digital governance.