Twitter silenced due to denial of service attack

Like many Mac users, we at TUAW are big Twitter fans (and also fans of some of the great iPhone and Mac clients for the service). Early this Thursday morning, Twitter became unavailable due to a denial of service attack, according to Biz Stone, Twitter's co-founder. Such attacks are deliberate attempts to disrupt service for malicious purposes.

Twitter came sporadically back online at around 9:15am EST after being down for roughly two and a half hours. As of 9:46 EST Twitter reported that they were working on restoring full service and that the system may be slow to respond to some users.

In my case, at around 1:45p EST, it took three or four minutes for Twitter to be accessible. The company's status blog says they are still working on addressing the issue.

[via InformationWeek]

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Source: http://status.twitter.com/

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Like many Mac users, we at TUAW are big Twitter fans (and also fans of some of the great iPhone and Mac clients for the service). Early...

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I'm on a MacBook and have been following Iranelection. It is the only source of info. of huge happenings in Iran. I joined Twitter to follow the election and awful aftermath of the government's crackdown. It is Friday Aug, 7 and I still cannot post or refresh on Twitter. Very frustrating!

August 07 2009 at 11:15 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Max

Whoever made this attack deserves a medal. Twitter is the biggest joke and is only useful in a small capacity to follow actually famous people. The rest of people on Twitter are old geriatrics who want to feel young (Though no young people really use twitter) and are fascinated by being able to know when someone took a good crap.

August 07 2009 at 1:57 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Twitter_hater

Twitter is a crap and useless webpage for morons tht dont have anything to do and dont have self estima... In few words for losers... So twitter shoulb be down for the rest of the life

August 07 2009 at 12:05 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

airmanchairman

All posters to date seem blissfully unaware of the role Twitter played in the recently-concluded and hotly-disputed elections in a far-off land, maybe too far for the denizens of your country to know about. Could there be a connection?

Quiz for the natives: name one or two places outside the USA:

Answer: er, Hawaii? Alaska? Oh, I know, ENGLAND, LONDON!

August 06 2009 at 10:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Pasnbyu

Why would Barak the Joker turn on one of his favorite sites? Were the posters actually transmitted? Just who is this joker anyway?

August 06 2009 at 8:59 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Paulie [eatlga]

Have you guys ever heard of Daylight Saving Time? It's what most of use are under now, so that would be EDT not EST.

August 06 2009 at 8:40 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

robogobo

oh? I hadn't noticed.

August 06 2009 at 6:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

julian

thats why it wouldnt work this morning
glad its back up