NIU quickly recovers from computer network attack

NIU's computer network quickly rebounded from a shutdown of the server late Friday, Jan. 24, that was part of a nationwide computer virus attack responsible for crippling networks and slowing Internet traffic.

Wally Czerniak, head of NIU Information Technology Services, said 85 percent of the problem on campus was corrected by 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 25. By Monday, Jan. 27, it was eliminated from campus.

"It wasn't intended to be a 'denial of service' attack. It was a server-to-server attack. It flooded the network with traffic trying to spread itself," Czerniak said. "A 'denial of service' attack usually has a lot of computers attacking one computer. This is not PC to PC as much as server to server. It just kept trying to spread itself, and doing it very rapidly."

The attack first was noticed about 11:30 p.m. Friday. Before long, hundreds of campus computers effectively were turned into what Czerniak termed "hacker robots," sending hundreds of thousands of messages to computers throughout NIU's network.

It forced the campus to temporarily block all access to the Internet from NIU computers in order to identify and fix the problem.

Nothing has occurred since NIU's technical support staff repaired the servers.

2-10-2003