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KVDU, DU’s student Internet radio station, will be back online sometime today or tomorrow after being hacked by Russians and having its servers crash last Thursday, March 24.
In response to the server crashing, KVDU station managers Claire Delahorne and Jack Reis hired a webmaster, junior Brandon Abbott, to reorganize the server and monitor it.
Abbott estimated that the hijackers flooded the directories on KVDU.org with network traffic. When University Technology Services (UTS) discovered the hijack originated from Russia, it immediately shut down accessibility to KVDU.org from all Internet users outside of Pioneer Net, said Abbott.
However, with a lack of system memory, the server crashed even to users on Pioneer Net, according to Abbott.
“Having any air time over 30 minutes and we would have been virtually in trouble,” said Abbott.
“Once the site comes back up, I’ll be working to make the site look better,” he said. “The disorganization on the server right now is really bad. Things still work, but barely. I want to get everything organized and make sure KVDU gets the functionality it needs.”
Abbott hopes the server will go back up some time today or tomorrow at the latest. He anticipates the reorganization will take all quarter.
Delahorne and Reis, the KVDU station managers, are using this opportunity as a turning point for operations at the station.
“We’re trying to make radio [at DU] fun again,” said Delahorne. “We’re a radio family. We’re all in this together.”