Twitter, the popular microblogging service, was crippled Thursday morning by a denial-of-service attack.
The extended silence in a normally noisy Twitterworld began around 9 a.m. Twitter later posted a note to its status update page saying the site had been slowed to a standstill by an attack. […]
Other sites reported that they were targets of denial-of-service attacks as well. The social-networking site Facebook said access to its site was impaired for some users for a short time Thursday morning. It said it had mostly resolved the problem but was continuing to monitor the situation. “No user data was at risk and we have restored full access to the site for most users,” a Facebook statement said.
LiveJournal said it, too, sustained a denial-of-service attack. The assault also began at about 9 a.m., and site access was limited for about an hour. It is unclear whether the problems at the sites are connected.
Twitter has contended with a series of security woes recently, including the hacking of several employees’ e-mail accounts and theft of company documents as well as a surge of phishing, spam and other malicious attacks aimed at its users. It reportedly has been undertaking a top-to-bottom security review.
CNet wonders if you could be to blame:
Of course you’re not personally responsible for bringing down Twitter, but if your computer isn’t equipped with up-to-date anti-malware software and the latest version of your operating system, you could unwittingly be part of the problem.
Breaking News Online captures some of the media frenzy around the Twitter outage.