Filed under: Internet Tools
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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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Ryan Morano said 3:07PM on 8-06-2009
OHH N00333ZZZ! HOW AM I GOING TO GET MY BRITTANY SPEARS AND PETE WENTZ FIXXX!!!! This twitter thing is getting far out of hand....
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Grant said 4:53PM on 8-06-2009
yup, following celebs is all twitter's good for.
Frank said 6:18PM on 8-06-2009
spoken like someone who's only read about twitter, and never tried it. i find it an invaluable way to keep up with my friends and family about what they are up to, and they with me. also, it works pretty well as an RSS-like news feed for all my favorite blogs.
philpoccia said 3:17PM on 8-06-2009
What do these morons expect to accomplish by doing these type of attacks?
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puhsitch said 5:56PM on 8-06-2009
If there is any good reason, I suppose it could be to show how it's probably best to keep services like Twitter decentralized.
Heimbachae said 3:18PM on 8-06-2009
i want to see a major networking site just up and vanish one day. just to see people's reactions.
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Adam said 3:34PM on 8-06-2009
That would be PST.
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David Winograd said 3:45PM on 8-06-2009
No EST is correct.
Serge VK said 3:40PM on 8-06-2009
I hate to be nitpicking (OK, I don't), but could you guys proofread your headlines before posting? That title could (should) be any of the following:
Twitter silenced due to denial of service attack
Twitter silenced by denial of service attack
Twitter silence due to denial of service attack
I'm OK letting errors slide in the body of posts...
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David Winograd said 3:43PM on 8-06-2009
Thanks. Corrected.
Retoocs said 4:13PM on 8-06-2009
Twitter is a stupid idea to begin with. I just ate a burger.. I just saw Ahnald... 123 characters of super useless micro-blogging. I say good riddance.
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kanebake said 4:17PM on 8-06-2009
you fail to understand the technology
it's a very accessible rss feed, through twitter i get
traffic, weather updates, relevant updates from blogs so i don't have to keep refreshing the sites.
No one talks about their burgers in my tweets.
It's no more useless than commenting on blog posts.
Frank said 6:20PM on 8-06-2009
exactly how i use it, kanebake. also, Retoocs, it's 140 characters. : P
Todd Sieling said 3:04AM on 8-07-2009
Slow day, time to troll.
hadrion said 2:04PM on 8-07-2009
When someone says: "Twitter is stupid and pointless" - I hear: "Ignore me when I try to talk about technology."
Jansperus said 3:09PM on 8-08-2009
Indeed. Twitter has quite a lot of uses if you actually want to use it well: Iranian election anybody? Sure, it could be used by people who just want to let everybody else know they ate a sandwich, but all technologies can be wasted. For example, blog commenting systems could be used to fuel in-depth discussions that edify all parties but are usually infested with pedantic jerks who complain about misplaced commas and trolls who just want to whine to be heard.
John.B said 3:48PM on 8-06-2009
I can get to Twitter through Safari on my iPhone but not through the Tweetie app.
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Galley said 3:46PM on 8-06-2009
If convicted, the parties responsible for any denial of service attack, should be subjected to denial of genitals.
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Dr. Who said 5:11PM on 8-06-2009
I doubt they make much use of them anyway.
Steven said 11:58PM on 8-06-2009
You're assuming the culprits are Male??
What if they're Female??