jjprojects: our social web » cyber attack http://www.jjprojects.com our social web: news and opinion from John Johnston on the state of the social media. Thu, 06 Jan 2011 04:24:41 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 Pulse Of The Planet (Twitter) Flatlines Due To DOS Attack http://www.jjprojects.com/2009/08/06/pulse-of-the-planet-twitter-flatlines-due-to-dos-attack/ http://www.jjprojects.com/2009/08/06/pulse-of-the-planet-twitter-flatlines-due-to-dos-attack/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:05:24 +0000 John Johnston http://www.jjprojects.com/?p=986


Late last night I was having flashbacks to 2007 when Twitter was down a lot and the Fail Whale was sighted all too often. Except this time Twitter was down for a long period and no fail whale was to be seen. It turns out it was not an internal problem.

Apparently Twitter experienced a DOS attack of substantial proportions. According to Mashable, attacks were also carried out against Facebook, LiveJournal, YouTube and other social media networks, although Twitter was hit the hardest. Although not confirmed, it seems the attack may have had something to do with the ongoing conflict between Georgia and Russia.

I hope attacks like this don’t become a growing trend, it’s really annoying for users, especially as more and more people are coming to rely on Twitter for their communications. It’s going to be difficult for Twitter to become “the pulse of the planet” if the pulse flatlines on an ongoing basis.

UPDATE: It seems the attack was targeted at one pro-Georgian user of Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Blogger (via Bronwen).

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