Information Technology Services

Blackboard Access Issuee

Outage category: Blackboard

Location: Onlline

Status: Closed

Resolved Alert:

Initial Symptoms

Reports to Support Center

Root Cause Analysis

Cause
On April 20th, Anthology’s DNS servers experienced a targeted and excessive amount of DNS requests which was intended to deny servicing DNS requests. DNS servers became overwhelmed and unable to service requests.

On April 25th, a change was executed to enhance our DNS services to prevent DDoS events like the one that took place on 4/20. This change was not successful which propagated incorrect DNS information across the internet. The change was rolled back but DNS is a pull- based request and took time to propagate the correction across the internet.

Resolution
Resolution

Some users needed to flush their DNS cache or contact their internet provider to flush at ISP level.

Prevention

Anthology fixed and re-executed the upgrade to DNS services to prevent issues like the one experienced on 4/20.