August 6th, 2009
Facebook and Twitter down: Social networking meltdown
Updated: 22:44 BST. Twitter came under a co-ordinated denial-of-service (DOS) attack earlier on today which left the site paralysed for a good hour or so.
At roughly 7am PST the site was attacked in a co-ordinated fashion, and the entire network was down for at least 30 minutes. Over the last couple of years, the site stability has been quite strong and the infrastructure was strengthened through a series of updates and scheduled downtime. However, there is little-to-nothing any site can do against denial of service attacks unless they have direct support from their service or network provider.
The ironic thing was that people were trying to use Twitter to search for tweets which told them if Twitter was down, or going down.
But as the major micro-blogging social network fell to its knees, those who couldn’t access the site turned to the nearest alternative, Facebook, as Mashable report.
As a result, it appeared that Facebook was also down for a short amount of time possibly due to the sudden influx of users who have both Twitter and Facebook accounts; due to another concurrent denial-of service attack which “degraded” service. With one network out of action, users didn’t help the matter by using their one remaining choice of social network, but had no idea they were helping the attackers at the time.
(Well, I went outside into the sunshine and mowed the lawn. I have a life outside my office.)
Twitter came down due to a deliberate and co-ordinated attack, whereas Facebook nearly fell partly due to the consequence of Twitter’s attack. FriendFeed also appeared to suffer for a time, also. It just shows the people power that the Internet still has. along with LiveJournal, one of the most used blogging services in the world.
It is now clear that these attacks were co-ordinated and deliberate, and were an attempt to derail three very popular web services, which not only keep people communicating but also report the news as and when it happens through citizen journalism. Some would consider this an act of terrorism, but with not a single causality reported, it is difficult to find substance in the definition.
Twitter now seems to be working now, albeit a little slow,but that is to be expected after such an attack. Facebook also seems to be working relatively well; presumably they saw this coming and have contingency plans such as this event in place.
For those desperate to access either Facebook or Twitter, try using your mobile phone instead. This will use less traffic and desktop clients using the API may not be working properly yet.
How did the down time affect you? Did you keep trying or go and do something else? Leave a comment and fulfil my intrigue.
Zack Whittaker, the youngest in the ZDNet network, is a British student at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where he studies BA (Hons) Criminology and Social Policy. His insight into the next-generation is unique and first-hand, sharing his knowledge of the here and now but more so what's next and how to get there.
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| 08/06/09
