Since Monday 7 december, many british universities are struggling to connect to internet following a target cyber attack on a nationwide education network.

Janet, the computer network that supports academic services at universities around UK, is the network responsible for running the country's .ac.uk and .gov.uk domains, so the attack has resulted in many universities, colleges and councils.
DDoS attacks are malicious attempts to knock out an internet service. This is usually done by flooding the target with great amounts of traffic. This causes the system to exceed its capacity and slow down or become unavailable to users.

It was this kind of attack that was used on TalkTalk in October, bringing the service down and allowing hackers to steal the information of tens of thousands of customers. Four people have been arrested in connection with the attack, which TalkTalk has said could cost it up to £35m.

This attack is the latest in a long line of DDoS attacks and highlights how any organisation that is reliant in any way on internet services needs to ensure that the availability of those services is adequately protected.

Source: www.bbc.com