An online security expert has questioned the Australian Bureau of Statistic Claims its census servers were attacked.
Adrian Wood who runs an international internet security business in northern NSW has questioned whether there were actual "attacks" on the system or whether the ABS servers were just not able to cope with the volume of people trying to log on all at once.
The ABS today has explained last night's census failure as the result of four different attacks on its system, three during the day and a fourth just after 7.30pm, meaning millions of Australians could not access the system.
"The way they [the ABS] are claiming that the attack happened in four different stages, doesn't really match up with how denial of service attacks work."
"The attack really didn't seem big enough to be a state sponsored event because they [the perpetrators] would have been able to shut down the site all day long for the rest of the year," Mr Wood said.
Using his expertise as an online security expert, Mr Wood said he looked closely at the census site and he found no measures in place to be prepared for the massive influx of users and the ramifications of that.
In addition, he said he found no denial of service protections in place.
"These are designed to detect malicious overseas activity for example, and divert that traffic away so that the service stays on line for legitimate use. There was nothing like that," he said.
Mr Wood said there was also no evidence of a web application firewall, which is "very important when you are worried about hackers."
Mr Wood said there was just one conclusion he could come to; that despite spending $500,000 on tenders to determine whether or not its servers and the applications running on it were up to the task, the ABS either got bad advice or it ignored advice.
The ABS said the security of the information which some Australians were able to lodge yesterday was assured.
Mr Wood is still a little sceptical but concedes "given the facts at hand, the data is probably safe."
