[Press Release] : FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: City website offline

[Press Releases]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Tony St. Romaine
Deputy City Manager
(573) 808-1576


City website offline

COLUMBIA, MO (December 26, 2014) - At approximately 11 p.m. on Dec. 24, city Information Technologies staff was alerted of a potential Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) attack on the City's GoColumbiaMo Web domain.

This form of attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by flooding the website server with requests from multiple sources. In most cases, they involve forging of sender addresses so that the location of the attacking machines cannot easily be identifpleaseied. IT staff has been working with providers to block all traffic to the city’s website to preserve other services. The website will remain offline until further notice.

While an attack of this type does not usually result in the theft of information or other security loss, it does result in the unavailability of access to a website and associated services which is what is currently being experienced with the GoColumbiaMo Web domain.

City IT staff is working to resolve the problem. Updates will be provided as more information becomes available.



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