Tech Stream

Twitter taken down by DDoS attack

7 August 2009

Micro-blogging social media service twitter was taken down overnight by a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.   Its been suggested that the attack originated in Russia and was targeting a pro-Georgian blogger who is a prominent user of the service. While this is still unconfirmed the attacks have also affected Facebook and Livejournal although both sites are now back up.  Twitter remains down as of 15:45 AEST Friday but the company confirmed earlier today that no personal user information had been accessed.

Technology business analyst Shelly Palmer told Associated Press Radio that denial-of-service attacks are a reality of the information age.

“People tend to want to take sites that are very public and go after them,” said Palmer, managing director of Advanced Media Ventures Group. “In fact you’d be surprised how many sites for major companies are really attacked on a daily basis. This is a crime, it’s a real crime and it should be treated that way.”

More at Associated Press and of course plenty of other news outlets, including this interesting article in TIME.  You can also follow this program at twitter.com/tech_stream