http://www.belize.gov.bz was tango down for over 24 hours as a result of a saturated internet connection. Whether or not it was a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS) is questionable considering such an attack really wasn’t necessarily to bring the system to its knees. The server was connected a Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)( 200.32.235.21) in the government office and has been this way since 2009. Any single computer with a high-speed internet connection and proper software could have saturated this server with page requests and overloaded the DSL connection. Or it could have simply been a few thousand people trying to connect at the same time. With the world coverage of this story it’s not unreasonable that the demand ultimately exceeded the capacity. Whoismcafee.com knows all too well of this scenario. However it happened, their DSL connection was saturated for over 24 hours preventing all other access. The IT staff has since co-located the server directly in BTLs offices allowing for more bandwidth and changed the DNS records to reflect the new IP address… 190.197.87.105

Although the mail server and web server were on different IP addresses, 200.32.235.21 and 200.32.246.122 respectively, they each had their own DSL connection, the web-server is running Windows/IIS6 , and the mail server is on a hardware based Kerio Connect 7.4.3, Therefore it’s not possible for the email traffic to effect the web-site in any manner.

The Belize government just got a taste of the power of the internet.