The Australian Bureau of Statistics has apologised after websites crashed during peak time on census night.
David Kalisch, the ABS chief statistician, told ABC news radio the site was subject to a sequence of denial of service attacks emanating from overseas. He says the ABS shut down the site to “protect the integrity of the data”, rather than the site crashing.
“From the scale of the attack it is clear it is malicious,” he said. “The data is secure and we expect to be in a situation soon to inform the public when the site will be ready again.
“I can certainly reassure Australians the data they provided is safe,” he said.
Kalisch said there were three attacks throughout the day on Tuesday, which were overcome, but the fourth one at about 7.30pm AEST caused severe problems.
The Australian Signals Directorate was now investigating, Kalisch said. He refused the speculate on the exact source of the attack, but in the past Australian government sites had been subject to attacks from Chinese hackers.
The ABS will release a statement at 9am about when Australians can expect to log back onto the census site.
On Tuesday evening, millions logged on to complete their online form. A few people reported problems early on but it largely was going ahead as planned for the majority
Submitted our @ABSCensus with zero drama and no website freeze. Nailed it. #census2016 pic.twitter.com/9b3cbhd5A7
— Meg Rayner (@megrayner) August 9, 2016
But not long after dinner time, many more millions also tried to log on – and then the problems started. As the servers crashed under the load, users were left with timeouts, grey pages or spinning beach balls of failure.
Social media was awash with screengrabs and memes using the #censusfail hashtag.
Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. #CensusFail pic.twitter.com/ZI9uLUwykc
— Kathryn Foran (@kathrynforan) August 9, 2016
Meanwhile, at the ABS... #CensusFail pic.twitter.com/BwkAzsTKOg
— Jen Dudley-Nicholson (@jendudley) August 9, 2016
I submitted my census an hour ago & now when I came back to room after having my dinner I found this.#CensusFail pic.twitter.com/AOobjcqvFS
— Arif (@Atozai) August 9, 2016
Keep calm everyone @ABSCensus IT team are on it #CensusFail #census2016 pic.twitter.com/lMG7qqKBrd
— Leeya (@leeyaorca) August 9, 2016
The technical collapse of the system also sparked observations on the prospect of electronic voting.
After pressing on with #CensusFail I can't wait to see how #auspol and #ausvotes go with electronic voting. Should be a snap!
— Helen Dale (@_HelenDale) August 9, 2016
Meanwhile, the official Twitter account continued to reassure people “the online form and website are operating smoothly as expected”.
They eventually came around, posting a little after 8.30pm AEST that the sites had crashed. A spokesman confirmed the outage to Guardian Australia and said they were working to restore the service. At 11pm AEST, the ABS tweeted that the service would not be restored that night.
ABS & Census website are unavailable. The service won't be restored tonight. We will update you in AM. We apologise for the inconvenience.
— Census Australia (@ABSCensus) August 9, 2016
The census was already under intense scrutiny and criticism after it revealed it would retain names and addresses for four years – up from 18 months – and link datasets together. Several senators were among those who vowed they would not give the ABS their name, despite the threat of fines of $180 per day for not completing it.
The ABS has assured users they will not be fined for not completing it on Tuesday - they have until 23 September to complete the form, provided it is filled out with information accurate for census night.
