Users looking to update their Twitter feeds or Facebook pages were
likely disappointed Thursday morning, as a denial-of-service attack
made both services hard to reach.
Around 9 a.m. Eastern Time, the number of responses from micro-blogging
service Twitter fell precipitously, reaching a bandwidth of 60 Mbps by
10:40 a.m. ET, according to Arbor Networks, a networking services firm. Twitter had reached nearly 200 Mbps prior to the drop.
The service continued to be impacted Thursday afternoon, reaching a
peak of 150 Mbps, about half of its normal peak for that time of day,
according to Arbor.
"As we recover, users will experience some longer load times and slowness," Twitter stated on its status blog. "This includes timeouts to API clients. We’re working to get back to 100% as quickly as we can."
Users also complained of issues accessing Facebook. The service
confirmed midday on Thursday that, it too, had suffered a
denial-of-service attack.
"You may have had trouble accessing Facebook earlier today because of
network issues related to an apparent distributed denial-of-service
attack," the social network stated on its own Facebook page.
"We have restored full access for most people. We’ll keep monitoring
the situation to make sure you have the reliable experience you expect
from us."
Source: http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/992