Revolution IT: Census fail was not our fault

Melbourne-based software testing provider Revolution IT has denied any wrongdoing in the Census website collapse last week.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics took the step of shutting down the website for Australia's first online Census on 9 August due to four separate denial-of-service attacks, leaving millions of users unable to complete the survey.

In the lead-up to the Census, Revolution IT was awarded multiple contracts worth a total of $496,000 to load test the website and simulate expected traffic. The company has also secured other contracts with the ABS since December 2015, with a total value of more than $1 million.

Revolution IT director Hamish Leighton told CRN that simulating a DDoS attack was outside the scope of the work Revolution IT was asked to do.

"There's an argument about whether an attack was expected or not, but our job was to cope with the expected amount of traffic," said Leighton.

"ABS asked us to replicate an amount of traffic that was well above what was expected. We're confident in the work we did and confident it was up to a high standard. The issues lay elsewhere, and we're starting to see people realise performance wasn't the issue as we look for who was responsible."

Leighton explained that a DDoS attack is considered a security concern rather than performance issue, and did not fall under Revolution IT's remit.

"It's fair to say the plan for a DDoS attack is to repel, rather than to make space for the increased traffic and continue using the website. It is possible to simulate the amount of traffic from a DDoS attack. I don’t know if IBM did that, it's a question for them."

IBM, which was paid upwards of $9.6 million to host the Census, has copped criticism from prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who questioned whether the IT giant did enough to prevent an attack.

Leighton also questioned why a DDoS attack – which Turnbull labelled as "completely predictable" – led to ABS pulling down the website.

"One of the questions that hasn't been asked is about geo-blocking and why it fell over. IBM would have prepped for that."

Turnbull's cybersecurity adviser, Alastair MacGibbon, and privacy commissioner Timothy Pilgrim have launched separate investigations into whether Australian's Census data has been compromised.

An IBM spokesperson last week apologised for the inconvenience, insisting no data had been compromised.