Server NC018 suffered a denial of service attack beginning at approximately 07:40 on 23 August, UTC. This continued until the server succumbed under the load at about 12:40. This affected all functions of the server: websites, sending and receiving emails, databases, etc.
Unfortunately we did not respond to this situation in a timely manner. This was partially because automated monitoring of server functions had been turned off due to an increasing number of false alarms from the system.
Once the server was rebooted at 13:47 and the attack mitigated, the server then still had a backlog of several thousand emails to process. This took several hours, with the queue being cleared by about 18:35. While emails were “missing” for several hours, no emails should have been lost; they were just delivered several hours late.
We sincerely apologise for the disruption caused by this event. We will reinstate monitoring and the associated actions that are taken when monitoring alarms go off.
We will shortly be responding to all emails and phone messages regarding this incident. If you have any further questions about this event, please contact us.
