Popular microblogging platform Twitter was down for several hours yesterday due to a heavy DDoS attack from as-of-yet unknown sources. Since that affects significant parts of our marketing plans (and daily communication with friends, customers, etc.), Mashable took the time to explain what DDoS means:
The goal of any Denial of Service is to take out a specific online resource and make it unavailable to its users. Targets are typically hugely popular destinations with a lot to lose, and with Twitter’s explosive growth comes its emergence as a juicy target for hackers and miscellaneous enemies or pranksters.
DDoS attacks often involve sending a flood of external communication requests to the site that at first glance may appear just like legitimate traffic. The intent is to overwhelm the service s resources to such a degree that it can’t respond to real requests for real users, effectively rendering the site unreachable or so slow to respond as to be impossible to use for some period of time.
DDoS attacks have happened for years now, targeting sites small and large, including Yahoo!, Amazon and more. Facebook was also reporting a slowdown in its service, though a connection to the Twitter attacks wasn’t confirmed.
So if you were wondering why your Twitter feeds weren’t showing up, now you have some more knowledge to give your audience.
