According to Mashable, Twitter’s currently under a DDOS attack today:
Twitter’s extended downtime today, now lasting almost 2 hours, has a malicious cause. Twitter has revealed that it’s defending against a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS), in which the target is typically saturated with so many fake requests that the victim is unable to return legitimate ones.
Knowing that the cause is a malicious attack does take Twitter off the hook to some degree – it may have been assumed that the site was simply failing to scale properly, as had happened in the past. DDoS attempts are difficult to defend against even for some established sites.
Ironic, given today’s post by Chris Johnson about how to prepare for Twitter’s eventual demise, no?
What happened though, is people flocked to facebook, which in turn had its own share of problems as well. I’ve also seen reports that StumbleUpon has been acting wonky today.
Does someone have it out for social networking sites? Hmm…
@jeffreyftang
I spent today’s downtime focusing on my work and generally getting more things done online. It was actually somewhat refreshing, though I’m glad that Twitter’s back up.
I’m curious as to how other people responded to the Twitter outage. Please do share your experiences: http://beyondfreelancing.com/2009/08/twitter-downtime-what-did-you-do/
@debohobo
I had been wondering what was going on, I thought my worst fear was coming true: My boss blocked my access!
Thank goodness it is on the Twitter end of things. Phew tragedy averted!
@ChartShark
It’s Al Qaeda! Sneaky terrorists…
@EricJohnTan
Even Facebook is extra slow today. maybe someone does have it out for social networking sites today.
@vrjbln
Well Friendfeed is still running smoothly
@mrsgooding
My twitter account is still suspended after the a bot or someone hacked into my account with a scam tweet promising big cash. I have written to twitter to ask them to lift my suspension as I was only a victim but no response yet. Any tips on what else I can do for twitter to lift my account’s suspension? Miss tweeting!
@propellerhead1
I never even knew it was down until I heard about it later on Twitter. I am so busy at work managing the technology for our office I rarely have the chance to turn my twitter client on much less enjoy it or interact with others. During lunch time I may fire up Facebook and do a quick scan while munching on my food but other than that it is nose to the grind stone. Social networking is fun however it has its place. Most employers probably would think that their employees ought to be doing something more productive than Twitter.
@MasterBis
I still experiencing problem. I always failed updating my tweet, and whenever I try to click follow, the loading time went and on and never finish. So in general I can’t do anything with my account. This had been going on for 2 nite -i think-