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Users frustrated by Twitter outage after DoS attacks

07 Aug 2009

Twitter crashed this afternoon following a denial of service (DoS) attack, leaving frustrated users unable to access the site.

Website monitoring and load testing specialist, Site Confidence, an NCC Group company, which has been monitoring the website, said that connectivity issues had dogged Twitter since 14.06 today. The site was back up at 16.46.

A statement on the Twitter status website said: “We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly.”

Paul Vlissidis, Director at NCC Group Secure Test, said: “DoS attacks are becoming commonplace. The fact that Twitter said that it was ‘defending’ the attack suggests that it was malicious. Popular websites have to factor DoS attacks into their security strategies, as it doesn’t look like they’re going away any time soon.”

Bob Dowson, Director at Site Confidence, commented: “Even thought Twitter seems to have recovered from this outage, it could face heavy traffic as hundreds of thousands of users attempt to access the site, which could prolong downtime.”

 

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