FBI Joins Probe Of Latest 'Denial Of Service' Web Outage At Rutgers
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The FBI has joined an investigation into the latest Internet outage at Rutgers University, the school announced Thursday.
Around 5 p.m. Thursday, the university continued to experience degraded online services as a result of "denial of service" attacks, according to the announcement.
The Internet first went down around 10 a.m. Monday on campus, and many online functions remained unavailable to students, faculty and university staff members days later.
Late last month, Rutgers technicians had to restore Internet service following an earlier cyberattack that affected tools used by both students and faculty.
The university was hit with a "denial of service" attack on Friday, March 27; service on and off campus was not completely restored until Tuesday, March 31. The school said it hadn't detected any theft of personal or confidential information.
In recent days, the university Office of Information Technology has been implementing a multi-faceted approach in response to the latest outage. The university has begun implementing network hardware upgrades, denial of service mitigation services, and Web server improvements.
University police have also been investigating with the FBI and the Office of Homeland Security Preparedness, the announcement said.
The FBI also has been investigating the earlier incident.
A "denial of service" attack is when a user directs other computers on a network to target and contact a computer server or particular website. The influx of traffic then causes Internet service to either slow down or shut down completely.
(TM and © Copyright 2015 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2015 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)