No Tsu for you: Facebook blocks social-networking competitor

Letter of Invitation: I would be available to answer any queries regarding best suburbs to integrate socially, just to let you know 21 suburbs of South Australia which are red-flagged by Australian banks. I am happy to provide detail answers to any questions with reference to Property Investment, Subdivision, Development, Buying/ Selling Residential, Commercial, Rural Properties and Businesses. I am available in person (Tue/Thu at 1289 South Rd, St. Marys, SA 5042 12 to 5 p.m) or on cell to answer any questions, and concerns you have to decide about your Real Estate. (Cell: 0431 138 537, Email: Saqlain@Dukesrealestate.com) Click here to invest in South Australian Residential Commercial, Rural Properties, Schools & Businesses. Published time: 6 Nov, 2015 18:09 Edited time: 6 Nov, 2015 19:12 Get short URL Facebook is deleting all links to fellow social media site Tsu.co on its site, as well as its Instagram and Messenger platforms, going so far as to scrub more than a million Facebook posts that referenced Tsu.co, including videos, photos, and comments. If a Facebook post mentions "Tsu.co," the site will offer a "Send Failed" message that says the "content you're trying to share includes a link that our security systems detected to be unsafe." Facebook began blocking Tsu-mentions on September 25, after Tsu users had generated an average of more than 2,534 visits a day to Tsu through Facebook posts. Facebook says users have complained about Tsu.co links, identifying them as spam. Tsu -- an upstart, invite-only social network that allows its more than 4.5 million users to keep a significant share of advertising revenue from ads displayed on a user's page -- says the move is part of an effort by Facebook, the leviathan of social media, to snuff out competition. "We're persona non grata," Tsu founder Sebastian Sobczak told CNN. "You can type in all sorts of seedy websites, and you can get to them. But not us. We don't exist." Facebook keeps 100 percent of ad-revenue profit generated from a user’s page. Tsu takes 10 percent, while the user keeps 45 percent, and the user’s friends that invited the them to Tsu share the other 45 percent. The financial incentive for potential users to sign up and invite others to Tsu has translated into a slew of posts on Facebook by Tsu users mentioning Tsu.co. Facebook says Tsu users have created fake Facebook accounts to steer traffic to Tsu. Facebook users have been reporting Tsu as spam, the site said. Facebook defines spam as “sending bulk messages, excessively posting links or images to people’s Timelines and sending friend requests to people you don’t know personally.” Tsu appealed to Facebook after being blocked, saying it hadn’t violated Facebook’s terms of service since it did not pay users to post content. Facebook says it will unblock Tsu as long as the fledgling site prohibits its users from posting on Tsu and Facebook at the same time. "We do not allow developers to incentivize content sharing on our platform because it encourages spammy sharing," said Melanie Ensign, a Facebook spokesperson, according to CNN. Read more © Dado RuvicFacebook snoops on people just like NSA – Belgian watchdog to court Tsu users such as photographers, artists, and others – who seek to make money from the site – said the block is hampering their ability to generate income from their work. In one case, Facebook deleted around 7,500 posts that mentioned Tsu by user Claudia Everest, who began selling her drawings of dogs – she does 25 per day – while undergoing chemotherapy. "It has had quite an impact on myself and my business," Everest told ZDNet. "The whole idea that Facebook have labelled my dogs as malicious content is laughable." READ MORE: Harvard student loses Facebook internship days after exposing privacy flaws On a larger scale, rapper 50 Cent -- who has more than 38 million Likes on his Facebook profile page and 131,000 Tsu followers -- posted a video on his Facebook page in July that included a direct link to access the video on Tsu.co. That post was one of many Tsu-related posts deleted by Facebook. Tsu founder Sobczak estimated last month that "five to ten million items have been removed from Facebook - both automated and manual." "We are investigating the extent of what is going on between Facebook and Tsu," he told ZDNet last month. "We have contacted them but they have not responded from any of the three platforms which have removed any historical mentions of Tsu. We encourage users to see if any content has been deleted and to contact these platforms to find out why their content has been censored."

Facebook says it was a target of sophisticated hacking

Facebook says it was a target of sophisticated hacking Fri, Feb 15 19:30 PM EST By Tim Reid and Joseph Menn (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Friday it had been the target of an unidentified hacker group, but it found no evidence that user data was compromised. "Last month, Facebook security discovered that our systems had been targeted in a sophisticated attack," the company said in a blog post posted on Friday afternoon, just before the three-day Presidents Day weekend. "The attack occurred when a handful of employees visited a mobile developer website that was compromised." The social network, which says it has more than one billion active users worldwide, also said: "Facebook was not alone in this attack. It is clear that others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well." Facebook declined to comment on the motive or origin of the attack. A security expert at another company with knowledge of the matter said he was told the Facebook attack appeared to have originated in China. The FBI declined to comment, while the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Facebook's announcement follows recent cyber attacks on other prominent websites. Twitter, the microblogging social network, said earlier this month it had been hacked and that about 250,000 user accounts were potentially compromised, with attackers gaining access to information, including user names and email addresses. Newspaper websites, including those of The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, have also been infiltrated. Those attacks were attributed by the news organizations to Chinese hackers targeting coverage of China. While Facebook said no user data was compromised, the incident could raise consumer concerns about privacy and the vulnerability of personal information stored within the social network. Facebook has made several privacy missteps over the years because of the way it handled user data and it settled a privacy investigation with federal regulators in 2011. Facebook said it spotted a suspicious file and traced it back to an employee's laptop. After conducting a forensic examination of the laptop, Facebook said it identified a malicious file, then searched company-wide and identified "several other compromised employee laptops." Another person briefed on the matter said the first Facebook employee had been infected via a website where coding strategies were discussed. The company also said it identified a previously unseen attempt to bypass its built-in cyber defenses and that new protections were added on February 1. Because the attack used a third-party website, it might have been an early-stage attempt to penetrate as many companies as possible. If they followed established patterns, the attackers would learn about the people and computer networks at all the infected companies. They could then use that data in more targeted attacks to steal source code and other intellectual property. In its statement, Facebook said the attack was launched using a "zero-day," or previously unknown flaw in its software that exploited its Java built-in protections. "Zero-day" attacks are rarely discovered and even more rarely disclosed. They are costly to launch and often suggest government sponsorship. In January 2010, Google reported it had been penetrated via a "zero-day" flaw in an older version of the Internet Explorer Web browser. The attackers were seeking source code and were also interested in Chinese dissidents, and Google reduced its operations in the country as a result. Attention to cyber security has ratcheted up since then and this week President Barack Obama issued an executive order seeking higher safety standards for critical infrastructure. Other companies stand to benefit more from comprehensive legislation, which has stalled in Congress. Republicans have opposed additional regulations that would come with mandatory security standards. (Reporting by Tim Reid.; Editing by Gary Hill, G Crosse and Andre Grenon)

Google's GMail service suffers disruption

Google's GMail service suffers disruption inShare9Share this Email Print Related NewsGoogle to charge small businesses for Web-based Apps software Thu, Dec 6 2012 In brewing rivalry, Instagram trims ties to Twitter Wed, Dec 5 2012 Student group takes Facebook privacy gripes to court Tue, Dec 4 2012 Facebook to share data with Instagram, loosen email rules Wed, Nov 21 2012 RPT-Petraeus case shows ease of government email snooping Sat, Nov 17 2012Analysis & OpinionCounterparties: 43 words you can’t say on Facebook Fake press releases are a public service Related TopicsTech » Media » A neon Google logo is seen at the new Google office in Toronto, November 13, 2012. Credit: Reuters/Mark Blinch SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Dec 10, 2012 2:17pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Several Google Inc Web products, including the popular GMail service, appeared to go dark for users on several continents on Monday. Google confirmed that "service disruptions" had affected GMail and Google Drive, its online storage service. The two products are part of Google's Apps suite, a Microsoft Office rival that caters to both consumers and businesses. By 10:10 a.m. Pacific Time (18:10 GMT), Google's Apps Dashboard monitoring service reported that GMail and Drive service had resumed. The company did not specify how many users were affected, or where, but the outage prompted widespread complaints on social media on both coasts in the U.S. and other major markets, from the United Kingdom to Brazil. Some users additionally reported that the outage had affected Google Docs, the company's word-processing and spreadsheet programs, while Chrome, Google's Internet browser, also crashed unexpectedly. "We are currently experiencing an issue with some Google services," Google spokeswoman Andrea Freund said in a statement. "For everyone who is affected, we apologize for any inconvenience you may be experiencing." Firmly entrenched in the consumer market, GMail is one of Google's most popular and important product offerings. The search giant, which has been pushing a corporate version of the email service and its Apps suite to businesses to compete with Microsoft, said this month that the package will no longer be free to business customers. (Reporting By Gerry Shih; Editing by Andrew Hay and Nick Zieminski) ===== Devin Coldewey, NBC News Facebook 'back to 100 percent' after outage Advertise | AdChoices Devin Coldewey / NBC News A number of Facebook users found themselves unable to access the social network Monday for a short time, but things are now back to normal, the company said. The outage started in the early afternoon and lasted, for some, at least an hour. For many, the site was down completely, while others saw only missing images. Subdomains like beta.facebook.com worked correctly, allowing people to access the site even when www.facebook.com would not load. Frustrated users took to blogs and services like Twitter to vent, also demonstrating the the outage, while fairly short, occurred in a number of countries worldwide. An unrelated issue caused Gmail and Google Drive to be unavailable this morning, making it something of a rocky day for those who rely heavily on the Web apps. A Facebook spokesperson issued the following statement to NBC News in an email: Earlier today we made a change to our DNS infrastructure and that change resulted in some people being temporarily unable to reach the site. We detected and resolved the issue quickly, and we are now back to 100 percent. We apologize for any inconvenience. DNS is the system by which clients and servers on the Web keep track of each other, and is occasionally the source of short outages like this one. It can also be deliberately disrupted by hackers, but that's not what happened Monday. Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc. Tags: Internet , Facebook , social-network , dns , outage

U.S. judges to decide venue for Facebook lawsuits

U.S. judges to decide venue for Facebook lawsuits Wed, Sep 19 14:03 PM EDT 1 of 2 By Tom Hals and Basil Katz (Reuters) - Before Facebook Inc investors can pursue their court fight over the social network's problematic stock market debut, a panel of federal judges must decide whether to put the cases under one roof and, if so, where. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation is due to hear arguments in Manhattan federal court on Thursday over how several dozen investor and shareholder lawsuits can proceed. The cases are widely expected to go to a judge in New York, although some investors whose cases are in California want the litigation to remain in San Francisco, near Facebook's home turf, for easy access to witnesses and documents. A few cases were also filed in federal courts in Florida and the District of Columbia, and in California state court. Investors sued Facebook after its May 18 initial public offering, which was marred by technical glitches at the NASDAQ exchange and accusations that the company selectively disclosed unflattering information about its business prospects to privileged investors. The lawsuits, which are seeking unspecified damages, could cost Facebook millions of dollars to defend, as it strives to put the disastrous IPO behind it. Facebook's stock tumbled as much as 50 percent after its debut at $38 per share. It was trading at $22.63 in early afternoon on Wednesday. In at least 33 lawsuits seeking class action status, investors have asked courts to hold the company and its underwriters responsible for causing their losses. Facebook has said that it did not violate any rules and that NASDAQ was to blame for trading glitches on the day of the offering. Representatives for Facebook declined to comment. An attorney for NASDAQ OMX Group Inc, which is also facing a number of lawsuits, did not respond to a request for comment about Thursday's hearing. AVOIDING DUPLICATION Grouping cases together keeps similar lawsuits from proceeding at the same time in different courts. Otherwise "It's a burden and waste on the judicial system," said Stanford University law professor Joseph Grundfest. "Why have 50 judges decide the same thing 50 times?" Facebook will argue on Thursday before a panel of 11 judges that U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet in Manhattan should try the cases. The panel, which meets periodically to decide where wide-ranging litigation should be consolidated, is expected to issue a decision within weeks. New York is "the center of gravity" of the case because witnesses, evidence relating to the IPO, and the underwriter banks are all in that city, Facebook said in court filings. Sweet was randomly assigned the first complaint filed against Facebook in New York, and all other similar cases filed in Manhattan federal court have since been added to his docket. Since many of the plaintiffs agree with Facebook and also argue against splintering the cases across different courts, lawyers observing the case expect the panel to hand the case to Sweet. Many of the bigger investors, including pension funds such as the North Carolina Retirement Systems, have already begun petitioning Sweet to name them lead plaintiff so they can direct the litigation. A handful of plaintiffs have said that San Francisco would be a better venue for some of the litigation and that the judge there, Maxine Chesney, is a better pick because she has handled complex cases like this. Following selection of the lead plaintiffs and lead law firms, the defendants are likely to ask the judge to dismiss the claims against them. If the lawsuits proceed, plaintiffs will be able to demand documents and access to witnesses to help them build their cases. Surviving a motion to dismiss also greatly increases the likelihood of a settlement. Besides the class actions, about a half dozen so-called derivative lawsuits seek to hold Facebook's board and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, responsible for damage they claim was done to the company. In a derivative lawsuit, the shareholder sues on behalf of the company, which receives any judgment or settlement. Also, at least 13 lawsuits seek to pin the blame for investor losses on NASDAQ, claiming it was negligent in failing to execute trades in the face of record-breaking volume during the IPO. Lawyers have said they expect those cases, which also seek class action status, to go to Sweet, but they might proceed on a separate track from the Facebook lawsuits. The case is In Re: Facebook Inc, IPO Securities and Derivative Litigation, U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, No. 12-md-2389. (Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, and Basil Katz in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) ================= Facebook pitches new $20 million "Sponsored Stories" settlement Mon, Oct 08 16:47 PM EDT By Nate Raymond (Reuters) - Facebook Inc has proposed a revised $20 million settlement in a class action lawsuit accusing it of violating the rights of users through its "Sponsored Stories" advertising feature after a U.S. judge rejected an earlier accord. The new settlement agreement, filed Saturday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, drops provisions setting aside up to $10 million for plaintiffs lawyers' fees and allows users to apply for a cash payment of up to $10 each. U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg rejected an initial settlement proposal on August 17 after questioning why the agreement provided no cash for Facebook users. The initial agreement provided no money to class members and instead set aside $10 million to be given to charities involved in Internet privacy issues. The new agreement, which is also subject to Seeborg's approval, allows for some of the funds to go to charity, but only if there is any left after users' claims, attorneys fees and other expenses are met. But given the size of the class, the charities might still get some cash. The agreement provides that, if it is not economically feasible to pay all the users a cut, the court may designate the entire fund as going to the charities. The proposed settlement covers nearly 125 million people, court documents show. The $20 million equates to less than 2 cents per class member. "We believe the revised settlement is fair, reasonable, and adequate and responds to the issues raised previously by the court," Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesman, said on Monday. Richard Arnes, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Filed in 2011, the lawsuit alleged that the social networking site's "Sponsored Stories" feature violated California law by publicizing users' "likes" of advertisers without any compensation or a way to opt-out. As part of both settlement proposals, Facebook also agreed to give users more control over how their names and likenesses are used. Facebook's revised agreement also provides new terms on targeting children. Facebook said it agreed to encourage new users to designate who else on the site is a member of their family. Parents will be able to directly have their children opt-out of the Sponsored Stories feature once their relationship to the child is confirmed. Facebook also now has a right to object to plaintiffs lawyers' fee applications, unlike the earlier settlement agreement. It was unclear how much the plaintiffs lawyers would seek with the new settlement. Facebook shares closed at $20.40 on Monday, down about 2.4 percent. The case is Fraley v. Facebook Inc., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 11-1726. (Reporting By Nate Raymond in New York. Editing by Andre Grenon) ==================

AT&T not only telco worry for antitrust watchdogs

(Adds link in Context News)

-- The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --

By Rob Cox
NEW YORK, March 28 (Reuters Breakingviews) - America's antitrust and telecoms watchdogs have their hands full with AT&T's proposed purchase of T-Mobile. So they may overlook what's at stake in a seemingly esoteric(Intended for or understood by only a particular group: an esoteric cult. See synonyms at mysterious.
) spat between Google geeks and their Facebook cohorts. But the quarrel raises vexing questions about the search giant's increasing dominance in the mobile handset market -- and whether it can resist the temptation to abuse that power.
On its face, the kerfuffle is still something of a "he said, she said" among the engineering set. Google said it is making a "small change" to the way contacts from Facebook appear on its next-generation handset, the Nexus S. This modification essentially no longer allows customers to download their contacts from Facebook. The reason, Google insists, is that the Facebook data cannot be exported from the device, creating "a false sense of data portability."
Of course, users of the phone and all those using Google's Android operating system can still access Facebook on their devices even if they can't synch contacts onto their gadgets. The concern among those outside the Googlepex is that this is the first sign of the search behemoth gradually creating barriers for Android customers to access Facebook and other websites it considers a threat. Both companies are battling for advertising dollars, users and talent.
Google's surging dominance of mobile operating systems is what's especially worrisome. Android-powered phones hold a 53 percent share of the U.S. consumer smartphone market, according to The NPD Group. And some Silicon Valley executives expect it to reach 80 percent in a few years.
Google's motto is to avoid evilness. So the decision to block Facebook's contacts on its new phones may simply be, as it says, a technology issue. Or it may be a shot across Facebook's bow to remind the group led by Mark Zuckerberg -- which itself has been accused of locking up user data -- that openness is a two-way street.
But as Microsoft showed with the abuse of its position in the 1990s to bury rival Internet browser Netscape, it's better to stop a monopoly early on than battle one fully unleashed. Trustbusters may want to be certain Google's word is still its bond.

CONTEXT NEWS
-- Tech blog Engadget post: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/22/google-disables-contact-sync-in-facebook-for-android-only-nexus/

((rob.cox@thomsonreuters.com))
(Editing by Jeffrey Goldfarb and Martin Langfield)

Twitter down, Facebook slowed down after 'malicious' cyber-attack after Junbish Sabz

Twitter, Facebook fend off DoS attacks
Published: 2009-08-06

Users looking to update their Twitter feeds or Facebook pages were likely disappointed Thursday morning, as a denial-of-service attack made both services hard to reach.

Around 9 a.m. Eastern Time, the number of responses from micro-blogging service Twitter fell precipitously, reaching a bandwidth of 60 Mbps by 10:40 a.m. ET, according to Arbor Networks, a networking services firm. Twitter had reached nearly 200 Mbps prior to the drop.

The service continued to be impacted Thursday afternoon, reaching a peak of 150 Mbps, about half of its normal peak for that time of day, according to Arbor.

"As we recover, users will experience some longer load times and slowness," Twitter stated on its status blog. "This includes timeouts to API clients. We’re working to get back to 100% as quickly as we can."

Users also complained of issues accessing Facebook. The service confirmed midday on Thursday that, it too, had suffered a denial-of-service attack.

"You may have had trouble accessing Facebook earlier today because of network issues related to an apparent distributed denial-of-service attack," the social network stated on its own Facebook page. "We have restored full access for most people. We’ll keep monitoring the situation to make sure you have the reliable experience you expect from us."

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"DoS" redirects here. For other uses, see DOS (disambiguation).
DDoS Stacheldraht Attack diagram.

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or persons to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers.

One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.

Denial-of-service attacks are considered violations of the IAB's Internet Proper Use Policy, and also violate the Acceptable Use Policies of virtually all Internet Service Providers. They also commonly constitute violations of the laws of individual nations.[1]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The wildly popular micro-blogging site Twitter went offline Thursday after a malicious cyber-attack on its systems, the company said.


Twitter was down for more than two hours before engineers at the California firm were able to get it back online with a warning at the website that "we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack."

"On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack," Twitter executive Biz Stone said in an official company blog.

"Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users," he said.

----------


NEW YORK - A hacker attack Thursday shut down the fast-growing messaging service Twitter, and Facebook also said it was looking into possible site problems.

Twitter said in its status blog Thursday that it was "defending against a denial-of-service attack," in which hackers command scores of computers to a single site at the same time, preventing legitimate traffic from getting through.

For Twitter users, the outage meant no tweeting about lunch plans, the weather or the fact that Twitter is down.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

The Twitter outage began at about 9 a.m. ET, said Ken Godskind, chief strategy officer at Web performance monitoring company AlertSite.

The site still had lingering access problems midday (local time), though both Twitter and Facebook seemed to be functioning at least intermittently, giving cubicle-bound social media addicts a collective sigh of relief.

Allison Koski, a public-relations manager in Manhattan, said she felt "completely lost" without Twitter.

"I had to Google search Twitter to find out what was going on, when normally my Twitter feed gives me all the breaking news I need," Koski said.

Incidentally, Facebook also seemed to be experiencing problems. Company spokeswoman Brandee Barker said the company was looking into it and would have an update "as soon as possible."

Technology business analyst Shelly Palmer told AP Radio that denial-of-service attacks are a reality of the information age.

"People tend to want to take sites that are very public and go after them," said Palmer, managing director of Advanced Media Ventures Group. "In fact you'd be surprised how many sites for major companies are really attacked on a daily basis. This is a crime, it's a real crime and it should be treated that way."

Earlier this week, Gawker Media, which owns the eponymous media commentary blog and other sites, was also attacked. In a blog post, Gawker said Tuesday it was attacked by "dastardly hackers," leading to server problems that caused network-wide outages Sunday and Monday. It was not immediately clear whether those attacks were related to Twitter's.

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Twitter vanishes from the web in malicious cyber-attack that 'could have been the work of a teenager in their bedroom'

By Dan Newling
Last updated at 1:12 AM on 07th August 2009



Twitter went offline this afternoon following a malicious attack

Twitter was taken offline temporarily yesterday after it fell victim to a 'malicious' cyber attack.

The free micro-blogging service, which has 2.4million users in Britain sending brief messages known as tweets, ceased functioning at around 3pm.

An attack could have been the work of a teenager in their bedroom, an expert said.

Colin Sweetman, who provides internet technology and digital media advice through his company E-Volutionary.net, said such attacks were very common.

He said: "It's probably the most common form of attack on a website because you don't need to be particularly bright to have a go at it. It's relatively unsophisticated.

"Quite often it's a 14 or 15-year-old or a university kid, not a skilled programmer, just someone with a bit of computer knowledge and nothing better to do with their time.

"Normally systems are pretty well protected to handle that kind of thing but it does happen."

Such attacks could be perpetrated from a single location, such as a teenager's bedroom,

he said.

Facebook also said it was "looking into" possible problems with the site, which was down temporarily today too.

A message posted on the Twitter blog said: "Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways and, in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users.

"'We are defending against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate."

The statement was posted on Twitter's official blog.

It's not clear when the outage began, but it appears to have started mid-morning Eastern time, or around 3pm GMT.

An update on Twitter's status page - at 4.45pm this evening - said the site was 'back up', and American commentators said they could access the site.

A typical 'distributed denial of service' attack is where those responsible infiltrate hundreds or thousands of computers with a virus, which then orders each computer to repeatedly 'visit' the website at a certain time.

This can caused hundreds of thousands of extra visits a second, overloading even the most well-prepared websites.

Major Internet services including Twitter do undergo unplanned outages from time to time because of overcapacity and other problems.
The Twitter blogsite, which confirmed the outage was due to an attack by hackers

The Twitter blogsite, which confirmed the outage was due to a cyber-attack

The service attack may also be affecting businesses, as Twitter has gradually been encouraging companies use a Twitter-based system to send communications.




The microblogging service - which allows users to send short messages to their friends and followers - had about 150,000 users in Britain in May 2008 but now boasts 2.6million - a leap of 1,679 per cent.
Kutcher

Big fans: Ashton Kutcher and wife Demi Moore held a race against news corporation CNN to secure a million followers on Twitter - and the celebrities won

Championed by a range of celebrities such as Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross and Demi Moore, who share their thoughts - however mundane - with the world via their 'Tweets', or Twitter messages, it has also developed a reputation for breaking news.

It played a key role in delivering the first reports of the ditching of a passenger plane in the Hudson River in January, and also the recent riots following the Iranian election.

It hit the news again last month when Tory leader David Cameron revealed he was not a fan of Twitter during a radio interview, but was criticised for expressing himself in overly colourful language.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1204795/Twitter-vanishes-web-malicious-cyber-attack-work-teenager-bedroom.html#ixzz0NSDQOmSy