Attack By Hackers Brings Twitter To Its Knees

[george]

Attack by hackers brings Twitter to its knees

WASHINGTON" -- Unidentified hackers brought the microblogging website Twitter to its knees for several hours Thursday.

Twitter founder Biz Stone said the site, which was down altogether for about two hours, had suffered a so-called “denial of service” attack.

“We are defending against this attack,” Stone said.

He added that Twitter would continue to update its site even though it remained under attack, and noted that the situation would be subjected to an investigation.

In a denial of service attack, hackers try to prevent access to a site by overloading it. As Stone explained, this kind of attack is most often used against online banking and credit card systems.

-- dpa 2009-08-07

[krading]

I don't use it

ergo

I don't care

[george]

Mashable commenters add that they’re also struggling with Facebook, the likely cause being a flood of Twitter (Twitter) traffic hitting the site.

[george]

Ongoing denial-of-service attack

We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly.

Update: the site is back up, but we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack.

Update (9:46a): As we recover, users will experience some longer load times and slowness. This includes timeouts to API clients. We’re working to get back to 100% as quickly as we can.

-- Twitter 2009-08-07

Overview of Twitter's Uptime History

http://www.Pingdom.com/reports/vb1395a6sww...tter.com%2Fhome

You can also watch the real time detox here...

http://Search.Twitter.com/search?q=twitter+down

[george]

Hackers bedevil Twitter, Facebook

Hackers knocked wildly popular micro-blogging site Twitter offline for several hours Thursday and caused performance stumbles at hot social-networking service Facebook.

A file picture of the Twitter homepage. Hackers knocked wildly popular micro-blogging site Twitter offline for several hours Thursday and caused performance stumbles at hot social-networking service Facebook.

Twitter was down for more than two hours before engineers at the California firm were able to get it back online with a warning at the website that "we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack."

"On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an official company blog.

"Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users," he said.

Facebook service was "degraded" by an early-morning distributed-denial-of-service attack on the Palo Alto, California-based Internet star's website, said Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker.

"No user data was at risk and we have restored full access to the site for most users," Barker said late Thursday morning.

"We?re continuing to monitor the situation to ensure that users have the fast and reliable experience they?ve come to expect from Facebook."

Twitter and Facebook have reportedly teamed with Internet powerhouse Google to investigate the attacks.

Hackers evidently employed classic distributed-denial-of-service (DoS) attacks in which legions of zombie computers, machines infected with viruses, are commanded to simultaneously visit a website.

Such massive onslaught of demand can overwhelm website servers, slowing service or knocking it offline.

The DoS attack hit Twitter about 6 am local time (1200 GMT) and caused the service to be offline until nearly noon.

Access to the website continued to be slow, with some aspiring users getting messages telling them that connections had "timed out" because Twitter computers were taking too long to respond.

After the service resumed, Twitter user Benjamin Hobbs fired off a message saying he "wishes the Denial-of-Service idiots would get a life and leave Twitter alone."

While an everyday chatting tool for many, Twitter has become a weapon used by dissidents to circumvent censorship in places where freedom of speech is suppressed.

Independent information about deadly riots in China's remote northwest filtered out on Twitter, YouTube and other Internet forums in July, frustrating government efforts to control the news.

The communist authorities who built the so-called Great Firewall of China raced to stamp out video, images and words posted by Internet users about unrest which, officials said, left at least 140 people dead.

Similar to the phenomenon seen a month earlier during Iran's political turmoil, pictures, videos and updates from Urumqi poured onto social networking and image sharing websites such as Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

In many cases, items were reposted by other Internet users on sites outside China to preserve the content, while Twitter helped link people around the globe to images Chinese authorities did not want seen.

Cyber-sympathizers from around the world joined forces through Twitter in June to help Iranian protestors dodge censorship, get out news of violent clashes and avoid real-world capture following Iran's disputed election.

Cyber attacks on Web pages of Iranian opposition figures have continued in the aftermath of the controversial presidential election in Iran.

-- AFP 2009-08-07

[Phil Conners]

Twitter and Facebook have reportedly teamed with Internet powerhouse Google to investigate the attacks.

The government law enforcement of the world has been impotent, so it is good to see some of the heavies on the Internet finally teaming up against hackers. Maybe spammers could be next. We can always hope...

[joncl]

The government law enforcement of the world has been impotent, so it is good to see some of the heavies on the Internet finally teaming up against hackers. Maybe spammers could be next. We can always hope...

One would assume it is one in the same BotNet doing both .. BBC Click did a great TV programme on this back in March of this year.

[nikster]

The government law enforcement of the world has been impotent, so it is good to see some of the heavies on the Internet finally teaming up against hackers. Maybe spammers could be next. We can always hope...

One would assume it is one in the same BotNet doing both .. BBC Click did a great TV programme on this back in March of this year.

That was a great report, yes.

There are many botnets out there, and you do not need any computer skills to rent one to do a DDOS attack. You just transfer a modest sum of money - a few thousand bucks - to the hackers and they'll do it all for you.

This time it was apparently the Russians going after a Georgian hacker. Bizarre, but considering that it costs very little to do this not too surprising.

[joncl]

There are many botnets out there, and you do not need any computer skills to rent one to do a DDOS attack.

I wonder how many computers were used for this BotNet from Thailand? As the net was unusually slow during this period (slower than normal).

[webfact]

What's it all about?

I can access both Twitter and Facebook!

No problems. Used it bot already 8am today

It seems to be solved as of yesterday there was a "denial of service"

Edited August 7, 2009 by webfact

[joncl]

Used it bot already 8am today

People who can read would see Georges post was referring to yesterday

[webfact]

Used it bot already 8am today

People who can read would see Georges post was referring to yesterday

Hold your horses! Ever heard of time zones?

[joncl]

Used it bot already 8am today

People who can read would see Georges post was referring to yesterday

Hold your horses! Ever heard of time zones?

Yes and assuming you are in the furtherest time zone before us (i.e. NZST = TST + 5hrs) it was working by then.

Edited August 7, 2009 by joncl

[cdnvic]

With Twitter down I was unable to see when my closest friends were taking out the garbage or pondering which salad dressing to order.

Facebook was a bit of an issue. I missed out on 4 hrs of Mafia wars.

[nikster]

The people who do this are not hackers, they are crackers. Hacker is a person who can be consider a knowledgeable and resourceful with computers.. but not a bad doers.

I think that distinction has gone by the wayside of history. Once we had hackers and crackers.

Now we have organized crime using (hackers/crackers) to sell DDOS and SPAM email services to third parties who may want to use them. The ones instigating the crimes are no longer the ones executing it - it's all become professionalized. The botnets are already in place, at the ready to accept commands, their services on sale.