Ubuntu and Canonical servers were taken offline on Thursday morning and have stayed down since then, disrupting normal communication after the company’s mishandled disclosure of a major vulnerability.
Over the past 24 hours, attempts to reach most Ubuntu and Canonical web pages and to download operating system updates from Ubuntu servers have repeatedly failed. Update downloads from mirror sites, however, have continued to work normally. A Canonical status page stated that its web infrastructure is facing a sustained cross-border attack and that the company is working to address it. Beyond that, Ubuntu and Canonical have not provided further public updates since the outage began.
Distributed denial-of-service pressure
A group that says it supports the Iranian government has claimed responsibility for the outage. Posts on Telegram and other social platforms say the group carried out a DDoS attack using Beam, a service that describes itself as a tool for testing how servers handle heavy traffic but is commonly used as a cover for attacks that flood third-party sites and take them offline.
In recent days, the same pro-Iran group has also claimed responsibility for DDoS attacks on eBay.
