Over the past week, the external websites of several Swedish authorities and higher education institutions have been periodically down or difficult to access. What are known as ‘denial-of-service attacks’ have been at the root of this.
On Saturday 11 February 2023, the University of Gothenburg and Stockholm University were both targets of such attacks, while earlier in the week the Swedish Transport Agency, the Swedish Transport Administration, 1177 Vårdguiden and several other hospitals were also affected.
Be mentally prepared
Denial-of-service attacks are when hackers use different means to overload the servers that manage websites. This then either makes it impossible to access the website or causes response times to become extremely long.
Behind the scenes, everything possible is being done to minimise the risk and potential damage of any such attack against Uppsala University. However, even our University could of course be hit by a denial-of-service attack.
It would be wise for all employees and students to be mentally prepared for the possibility of this happening and for it to be difficult to access information about what is happening or the University’s IT systems if an attack occurs.