"Canonical’s web infrastructure is under a sustained, cross-border attack and we are working to address it."
Incident Overview
A group of hacktivists claiming to be The Islamic Cyber Resistance in Iraq 313 Team has taken responsibility for a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack targeting the public-facing infrastructure of Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution. The attack began on Thursday and has affected multiple services, including the Ubuntu security API and several websites.
Impact
- Users have reported being unable to update or install Ubuntu packages.
- TechCrunch verified that updates failed to install on a test device running Ubuntu.
- Canonical acknowledged the attack on its website, stating: "Canonical’s web infrastructure is under a sustained, cross-border attack and we are working to address it."
The outage has directly impacted the ability of Ubuntu users to apply security patches and install software, a critical function for both individual and enterprise systems.
Claims by Hacktivists
The group claimed responsibility via Telegram and stated they used a DDoS-for-hire service called Beamed, which reportedly can launch attacks exceeding 3.5 Tbps.
Duration and Response
As of the time of reporting, the outage had lasted approximately 20 hours. Canonical did not respond to a request for comment.