Twitter attacked! No one can tweet about it

Posted by kent on August 6th, 2009

Couldn't find out what Ashton Kutcher was having for breakfast this morning? Blame a denial of service attack on popular social-media/micro-blogging site Twitter. While service has now been restored, the attack knocked the service offline for about three hours (according to their blog posts). A denial of service attack happens when a group of computers continually sends requests to a website, overwhelming its capabilities to handle traffic. Usually, the computers that do this are infected with malware, and their owners are unaware it's even happening. According to Information Week, it was a denial of service attack that crippled the popular Gawker media sites earlier this week.

Malware can hit any unprotected computer making it a part of a botnet. While a three-hour Twitter fail is not catastrophic, the same attack on the computer systems belonging to a banking, healthcare, or public utilities company could be. Keeping your computer protected from viruses and malware not only protects your data, but also protects the computer systems that we all rely on.

Find out which Internet security software we liked the best with our Internet Security Software ratings and reviews.

• Data Breach Alert: Hundreds of thousands of computers infected by Russian hackers
• Malicious hack impacts 2.2 million shortened URLs
• Identity Guard adds 30 day free trial and free ZoneAlarm software
• What is the most recommended software?
• If I install Identity Guard, will it automatically uninstall Norton?