The Australian Bureau of Statistics has revealed the 2016 Census website was hit by a series of denial of service attacks last night, leading to a widespread outage.
Thousands of Australians failed to lodge their online Census last night due to website problems, with many taking to social media to vent their frustrations.
ABS chief David Kalisch revealed this morning that the ABS took the measure of shutting down the website just after 7.30pm following the fourth attack to "ensure the integrity of the data", reported the ABC. The site, www.abs.gov.au, was still down at the time of writing.
"The online census form was subject to four denial of service attacks yesterday," he said. "The first three caused minor disruption, but more than two million forms were successfully submitted and safely stored."
Kalisch said the Australian Signals Directorate were investigating and while "it may be very difficult to source the attack", it was believed to come from overseas.
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