[g-clef]

I'm going to regret this, I bet, but here we go: Many years ago I was the manager of the team inside NIH/CIT that ran both the border firewalls and the DNS servers in question (to be specific, at the time it was NIH/CIT/DNST/NEB/NSS). Obviously, since I'm not there anymore I don't have any special inside information, but given that the DNS servers were responding to TCP and not UDP during the outage, my bet would be a simple firewall screwup, rather than malice.

Stuff happens - maintenances have unintended consequences, people typo stuff, etc. Don't freak out about every event - save your powder for the real outrages (like 18F).

[bryancoxwell]

Editing to remove an unproductive comment.

[zmgsabst]

And you believe that DOGE employees are tweaking firewall rules at NIH IT?

[henryway]

18F?

[vaylian]

See https://18f.org/