Internet outage on Friday, October 9, 2015 at 11 PM

On Saturday, October 10, 2015 at 12:45 AM, a major network device failed and prevented access to the Internet. A temporary work around has been put in place at 4:30 AM. However, Wireless users, and general purpose lab computers still don’t have Internet access. Network services team is investigating the problem.

Update at 4:00 PM October 10:

Update at 4:45 PM October 11:

Since approximately 11PM on October 9, Ryerson’s network has been under attack. The cyber attack initially caused the failure of a set of devices that are an essential component of Ryerson’s network. The result was a complete loss of Internet connectivity. For a time people on campus could not access the Internet and people outside Ryerson could not access any of Ryerson’s locally hosted online services. Since then our network has been returned to service and CCS has been working with our Internet Service Providers and Network infrastructure vendors to better protect the network from the attack.

As an interim measure we also blocked most traffic originating from outside Canada from reaching Ryerson. This had the unfortunate effect of blocking students, faculty, and staff outside Canada from using Ryerson’s email and other online resources. It also delayed the delivery of email from around the world. Whenever possible we are now gradually relaxing international access restrictions.

While the attack appears to be targeting our network availability we are also looking for signs of other intrusions and for any attempts to compromise other systems.

CCS staff are now doing the painstaking work required to better understand the nature of the attack and further defend against it.  We will continue to post updates here as new information becomes available.

Update at 1:00 AM October 12:

Access to Ryerson from most of the world has been restored. We are still temporarily blocking some geographic areas.