It seems that almost the entire country has, finally, come to understand the frustration of Centrelink and MyGov.
After Prime Minister ScoMo announced we were entering Stage One of social distancing measures, thousands of Australians were faced with the prospect of having to sign-up for Centrelink payments. And while queues formed around blocks (in part thanks to good social distancing practice), even more flooded Centrelink’s MyGov website causing it to crash under the “unprecedented demand”.
Thousands of people outside @Centrelink offices across Victoria this morning. This was just half of the line at Abbotsford. Many have been queuing since 8am… @10NewsFirst pic.twitter.com/tXlV6gl44E
— Kristina Costalos (@kcostalos) March 22, 2020
That and a cyber attack.
The Federal Government’s Minister for Government Services, Stuart Roberts said the tidal wave of users trying to access the website plus a distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyber attack led to the crash this morning.
“The site didn’t crash. More than 55,000 Australians were trying to access at the same time, as well as the issue we had with the denial of service attack,” he said.
In other words, a bunch of pesky hackers overloaded the website with a flood of users. These were the same hackers, conveniently, responsible for the 2016 Census website balls up.
But Twitter users weren’t buying it.
When you don’t want to admit your infrastructure is not up to the task… #mygov #coronavirusaustralia pic.twitter.com/66gvZtkYF9
— Chris Watson (@theaveragemuso) March 23, 2020
So, every time the #Centrelink web portal craps out the Minister for defunding Government Services can just blame it on hackers?#DDOS = hackers flood a website with users to make it crash.
Or maybe, like the Census, millions of people just tried to access #MyGov and it failed! https://t.co/4QhV1SnRbS
— ThomTommyTomTom (@ThomTommyTomtom) March 23, 2020
It’s almost as if the last 20 years the government spent dismantling our social security network and making it harder to apply was a bad idea.
— Aaron Z (@aaronzig32) March 23, 2020
On Sunday evening, ScoMo announced that thousands of businesses – including pubs, cafes, restaurants, and gyms – will have to shut up shop or, at least, limit their services to non-contact capabilities. [BTW, your take-out is ok, but your options might be a bit limited for a while.]
Inevitably, a huge chunk of the workforce suddenly found themselves out of a job and in need of unemployment benefits, to which The Coalition had cushion to soften their fall. They announced the Jobseeker welfare payment would double to $1100 a fortnight (temporarily) and the usual waiting period and assets tests will be waived.
It was a disaster waiting to happen.
As any person who is receiving welfare knows, Centrelink and MyGov are a slow, aching pain in the neck at the best of times. And that’s when the site is dealing with 6,000 – 7,000 users at a time. Can you imagine the absolute hell it is when almost ten times that many are barging through the gates at once?
Sounds like a headache to me.
Actually, It Wasn’t A Cyber Attack
During Question Time today, Mr Roberts backtracked on his previous press conference comments. He told the Parliament that the massive traffic on the site triggered a DDos alarm.
Stuart Robert tells Parliament that the traffic to Mygov triggered a DDOS alarm NOT that there was actually an attack 🙄 #qt
— Tim Watts MP (@TimWattsMP) March 23, 2020
That’s like saying you had a kitchen fire because the fire alarm started beeping, when really all it did was show you’re a bad cook.
Image Sources: Twitter (@MurrayWatt), my.gov.com
