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As most of you on Twitter have already acutely become aware today… Twitter is down!

twitter status

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is usually a malicious attempt to create havoc for a website — which ruins it for the intended users (us on twitter). Here is a graphic layout of what happens.

The United States Computer Emergency Response Team defines symptoms of denial-of-service attacks to include:

• Unusually slow network performance (opening files or accessing web sites)
• Unavailability of a particular web site
• Inability to access any web site
• Dramatic increase in the number of spam emails received—(this type of DoS attack is considered an e-mail bomb)[2]

Denial-of-service attacks can also lead to problems in the network ‘branches’ around the actual computer being attacked. For example, the bandwidth of a router between the Internet and a LAN may be consumed by an attack, compromising not only the intended computer, but also the entire network.

If the attack is conducted on a sufficiently large scale, entire geographical regions of Internet connectivity can be compromised without the attacker’s knowledge or intent by incorrectly configured or flimsy network infrastructure equipment.

(above direct from wikipedia)

One method slows down your internet connection (which is sometimes hard to determine if it’s a natural growth or malicious attack) and the other completely stops the ability to access the site. This seems to be the case for Twitter today on Thursday, August 6, 2009.

Watch out…

In the Police and Justice Act 2006, the United Kingdom specifically outlawed denial-of-service attacks and set a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Tweet ya later - er… or not!

-Matt Clark | Creative Guru and Troubled Twitter’er