Along with Twitter, Amazon, and Netflix, internet users had problems accessing the career services office’s online platform Friday, after the largest distributed denial-of-service attacks in history.
Students had trouble loading Handshake’s website — which uses Dyn, one of a few major domain name service companies, to connect users to its server — after junk data traffic overwhelmed Dyn’s infrastructure Friday.
“It was by no means specific to us,” Handshake Head of Business Jonathan Stull said. “All we could do was let the career services and employers know about the situation.”
New World Hackers, a network of hackers against corruption, took credit for Friday’s three attacks. The first mostly affected users on the East Coast, while a second was successful at blocking users from accessing websites that use Dyn’s service internationally. Dyn was able to prevent a third attack.
Senior Larissa Clark, a student affairs mentor for career services, was unable to gain access to Handshake, when she was trying to register for career services’ Nov. 10 internship and job fair.
“It was important because I wanted to register early, which would get my resume to the employers coming sooner,” Clark said.
Clark was later able to log onto Handshake and register for the internship and job fair.
Stull said the attacks affected the website at varying times throughout the day. Users experienced problems first on the East Coast and later in other parts of the country. Stull said the site, however, still saw more than 50 percent of its usual Friday activity.
“It’s unfortunate that any of our students and users were affected,” Stull said. “Dyn and the government are looking into the infrastructure to better secure in the future.”
Friday’s attack only denied service to people attempting to use the site. The hack didn’t steal any private information, Executive Director of Career Services Ken Koopmans said.
“Handshake does a great job at keeping things secure,” Koopmans said.
