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Twitter Being Attacked By Hackers

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08/08/2009 | admin     266 Times Read

Many Twitter fans this week have been upset about their favorite microblogging site being offline several times, which is unusual for the third-largest social networking site in the world. Recently, unknown hackers have sent attacks to the site, succeeding in impeding the service and angering their many customers.

These attacks, called DDOS attacks, are common on the internet and often targeted to large, well-known websites. A hacker typically uses a system of computers to repeatedly send excessive requests to the website, overloading the server and clogging up precious bandwidth. The server is then forced to shut down and unable to handle the requests of its legitimate users. There are many reasons why a hacker would want to take down a website, but one thing remains clear: the Internet is a dangerous place.

These attacks once again raise the issue of security among social networking websites. If one person is able to take down an entire website, then it seems possible for him or her to infiltrate the server and steal personal information of all its clients. Many users have lost trust about the security of their personal information on such websites and avoided providing information that these services need to function. While other social networking sites such as Facebook have also been attacked, Twitter has been relatively unprepared for a security threat and stirred concern among its users.

Despite these attacks, many experts insist that personal information is safe on sites such as Twitter.com. While sending a DDOS attack may be alarmingly easy for a hacker to do, it is much more difficult and uncommon for a website’s information to fall into the wrong hands. Even Twitter is well-prepared for such an attack and will respond if necessary to keep information safe and protect the identity of its customers. Twitter’s site has since recovered from its attack and sends a message to all its users: Tweet away!

Subscribe to comments feed Comments (15 posted):

steven on 10/26/2009
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twitter new found fame makes a easy way for hackers
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steve on 10/26/2009
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Twitter and Facebook both suffered service problems as a result of hacker attacks , raising speculation of a co-ordinated campaign against the world's most popular online social networks
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douf on 10/26/2009
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Twitter, the popular microblogging service, was knocked down by a malicious attack that prevented people from accessing its website for several hours. Facebook members saw delays logging in and posting to their online profiles, which the social networking site said was related to an "apparent distributed denial-of-service attack."
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tina on 10/26/2009
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Facebook was working with Twitter and Internet search company Google Inc. to investigate further, said a person familiar with Facebook but who was not authorized to speak to the media.
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lisa on 10/26/2009
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Speculation swirled that other social networking sites had also come under attack, after relatively lesser-known site LiveJournal said it, too, had been targeted by hackers yesterday. But those rumors could not be confirmed.
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cristopher on 10/26/2009
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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said on Twitter's blog that the site was the victim of a denial-of-service attack, a technique in which hackers overwhelm a website's servers with communications requests.
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cindy on 10/26/2009
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"We should defend against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate
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nicole on 10/26/2009
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Motives for denial-of-service attacks range from political to rabble-rousing to extortion, with criminal groups increasingly threatening to hobble popular websites that do not pay demanded fees
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jeff on 10/26/2009
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Twitter, which lets users publish 140-character messages to groups of online "followers," is one of the fastest-growing Internet companies.
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mike on 10/26/2009
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increasing name increasing risk
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Michelle Ocampo image is currently an airline employee and in her freetime loves to write. She is a Facebook fanatic.