Web24 hit by DDoS attack

Web hosting firm Web24 was hit by a prolonged distributed denial-of-service attack late last that allegedly caused some connection issues for users of the Vocus network in Melbourne.

The attack started last Thursday and continued until late Friday.

"There is a Distributed Denial of Service attack coming down one of our upstream providers," an outage notification from Web24 said.

"The IP addresses have been reported and we're working on a block/resolution at this time. This only affects Vocus-link clients (eg. Telstra, Optus). Our other upstream providers are not affected."

Web24 is based in Fujitsu's Noble Park data centre.

It was understood the source of the traffic was spread across Asia, Russia and the United States.

The attack flooded a Telstra link in Melbourne that formed part of Vocus' network. Vocus is a wholesale IP network provider.

Vocus chief James Spenceley declined to confirm the identity of the hosting firm targeted but said Vocus had advised them to report the attack to the e-crimes unit of Victorian Police.

"We contacted all peers and upstream providers and requested filtering of that traffic," Spenceley told iTnews.

"One of those traffic sources was Telstra but there were a number of sources of the traffic. It was just a prolonged attack."

The impact caused at least one other Melbourne firm, Ventra-IP (formerly Cove) to shut down its Vocus link and shift to secondary provider Intervolve.

Web24 could not be reached for comment due to a public holiday.