For a few hours at least, ESPN executives didn’t have to worry about their reporters Tweeting away scoops or trade secrets: Twitter went down.
Since about 9:00 a.m. (ET), the social networking juggernaut has been down intermittently due to what the company is calling “an ongoing denial-of-service attack.”
Twitter users were forced to use such antiquated technology as instant messages and e-mail to alert fellow Twitter users that Twitter had been hacked. (I wonder who told Shaq?)
Meanwhile, Livejournal was hit by a similar attack. "It would be a huge coincidence if they aren’t tied to one another," a company official told PC Magazine. Facebook went down briefly too, but it was unclear whether it was an attack like those that plagued Twitter and Livejournal.
To underscore just how important Twitter has become to the media business, the San Francisco Chronicle called the attack nothing less than a “national security issue.”
Here, in 140 characters or less, are some selected reactions from the online media world:
@baynewser: It’s likely been hit by somebody barraging its servers so incessantly with requests that legitimate users are shut out.
@wired: The was first major outage the service has suffered in months and possibly the first ever due to sabotage.
@CNET: Could YOU be responsible for the Twitter outage?
@Symantec: DOS attacks come from computers infected with bots, turning them into Zombie computers doing their cybercriminal’s bidding.
@SFChron: Twitter attack a national security issue.
@techcrunch: That’s way more exciting than run of the mill outages that have plagued the site since forever.
@Forbes: Why Twitter went down.
@PCWorld: Why this one matters.
@techcrunch: Since most of you spend your entire work day screwing around on Twitter you may be left wondering what to do now.
@techcrunch: We have a list.
