Twitter Hit By Denial Of Service Attack; Facebook Problems Too

August 6, 2009

The popular social blogging service Twitter was down Thursday morning, hit by a denial-of-service attack that left the service inaccessible for hours.

“We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly,” the company said in a post shortly before 10:00 CDT. An update posted on the company’s status blog said “the site is back up, but we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack”.

“We’re working to get back to 100% as quickly as we can,” the company said.

The social-networking giant Facebook also had network issues Thursday morning, with some users reporting that portions of the site were not working at all or were slow.

A denial-of-service attack employees thousands or even millions of computers to attempt access upon a particular site. The site is unable to handle the massive surge in traffic, and it fails. In a denial-of-service attack, a company’s computers and security are not breached; the site is simply rendered offline. User data is not at risk during a denial-of-service attack.

Comments

One Response to “Twitter Hit By Denial Of Service Attack; Facebook Problems Too”

  1. Dano Hart on August 6th, 2009 4:44 pm

    Twitter is a vital part of communication now, and has been for a couple of years. I realized how much I used it, and relied on it when this happened this morning.

Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News