Twitter Knocked Offline By DDoS Attack

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — A massive DDoS attack on DNS servers is knocking Internet sites such as Twitter offline on Friday.

According to security researcher Brian Krebs at Krebs on Security, a large attack is affecting the domain name server company Dyn.

A DDos attack, or a distributed denial of service attack, happens when many computers or devices send a lot of data to a site at the same time. The ensuing flood of traffic essentially knocks the site offline, denying access to the site to its normal users.

Most of the time, the traffic comes from computers that have been infected with some form of malware, allowing someone to take over and use them to flood an unsuspecting server with traffic. People who have been infected may not even know their computer has been affected.

Dyn reported an attack on its servers earlier on Friday morning, but appeared to have the issue resolved. A second wave appears to have hit, knocking the servers offline at around 9 a.m. on Friday.

Investigating - As of 15:52 UTC, we have begun monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack against our Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure. Our Engineers are continuing to work on mitigating this issue.

This latest attack is also affecting its monitoring services.

Update - This DDoS attack may also be impacting Dyn Managed DNS advanced services with possible delays in monitoring. Our Engineers are continuing to work on mitigating this issue.
Oct 21, 16:48 UTC

Twitter appears to have gotten back online at around 10 a.m. on Friday.

Concerns have grown in recent days after a report from Akamai revealed a critical vulnerability in so-called Internet of Things devices. A 12-year-old vulnerability that's been patched in most computers and other devices has been exploited in devices as simple as an Internet connected security camera.