Elon University students received an email Wednesday evening regarding an attack on the university's network that intended to shut down the entire network. The attack influenced the operation of the network, but did not endanger data.
The networking department will provide the help desk with a list of MAC (Media Access Control) addresses of computers that were compromised during the attack. Users experiencing trouble accessing the network currently should bring their computer to the help desk, where a technician can confirm if the computer is on the list of infected computers.
Network shutdown compromises communication, said Chris Fulkerson, assistant vice president for technology.
Students may have experienced trouble using campus technology such as phones, e-mail and Internet Wednesday, but datatel information resides in a separate, more heavily guarded network, which was not affected, he said.
In order to prevent an overload, the networking department removed a building from the network to find out which computer was coordinating the attack, which may have caused problems accessing printing and Internet, Fulkerson said.
Fulkerson said he advises student to update operations systems to protect computers from infection.
"This attack was because people went onto an infected website and got their computer infected, and the computer becomes a part of a botnet," Fulkerson said.
Computers become part of a botnet, a collection of infected computers connected to the Internet, when a network user runs malicious software. Therefore, the activation of the software on one computer enables the infection of the operating system to become part of the network.
"The hacker activates one computer and when you try to hone in on that one, it goes to the next one and jumps around," Fulkerson said.
A network overload signaled to network administrators the possibility of a shutdown. Network administrators monitoring the system noticed a change in the core switch, which transmit data, and signaled something was wrong with the network. Core switches usually remain at 20 percent utilization, but network administrators saw the core switches rising to 80 percent utilization, Fulkerson said. When core switches reach 90 percent, they shut down.
The networking department is still working to understand what happened and working to prevent the core switches from being easily overloaded, Fulkerson said.
"There are 1,000 attacks going on the network all the time, but we have defenses in place such as firewalls and other types of protection to make sure our network is safe and our data is secure," he said.
The attack did not translate to a virus spread around campus, according to Colt Higgins, campus technology help desk associate. Virus related problems are not related to the problems with the network.
Tweeted information was based on interpretation of information available at the time. Clarifications of necessary procedures and information will be posted as it becomes available.