Is Twitter Down

Yes, Twitter's Down and Facebook's Slow
It's not just your computer: Twitter has been inaccessible this morning, apparentlybecause of a denial-of-service attack. And Facebook's been either sluggish or unresponsive; for instance, I've had trouble opening my inbox, and many news-feed links haven't worked. So you might as well stop hitting the "refresh" key over and over and accept the situation for what it is.

It's normal to get angry about downtime at a site you use every day, but in this case it might not be a bad thing. The world won't end while Twitter and Facebook right themselves; why not take this opportunity to catch up on some chore you usually postpone in favor of updating your status or reading other people's updates at these sites? Why not try to remember what you used to do with your time before these sites made their way onto your bookmarks list?

(Disclosure: I've got a column to write, as usual for a Thursday. So Twitter and Facebook's issues actually come at a pretty helpful time for me.)



Morning Xtra: Twitter Down, Tumblr Up, Fox News to Stop Being Free
Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines....
Those of us who are just now finally digesting 'Twitter' need to get ready for a new social-networking site (and verb) to hit the mainstream. Tumblr, a simple photo-blogging site, had over 255 million page-views in July alone. Next big thing, anyone? [From: Mashable]
Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp., announced yesterday that his news sites, including Fox News, News of the World, and the UK-based Sun, will begin to charge a fee for content, stating that "quality journalism is not cheap." [From: Guardian.co.uk]
Someone is trying to kill Twitter! At post time, the micro-blogging site is down due to a DOS (Denial of Service) attack. Defend our tweets! [From: Twitter]
TUAW has listed its "Top Five iPhone Apps For Lawyers." Some aren't strictly law-related, like Timewerks, which helps users schedule their projects and activities, but Black's Law Dictionary is perfect for litigators on the go. [From: TUAW]
The price of the heavily shrouded TomTom GPS iPhone app has been leaked; it'll cost drivers a cool $194 (making it the most expensive app to date). Fortunately, the price includes a stylish cradle and enhanced voice instructions. Phew. [From: Handtec.co.uk, via DaniWeb]
Aiming to compete with Facebook in ruining the reputations of its users, the Sony Party-shot tripod (launched with the WX1 and TX1) can be set up at soirees to pan around the room, find faces, and compose shots, making sure drinks in hand and flirty faces will be captured for all to see. [From: Engadget]



Twitter down after attack
Twitter went down for more than two hours Thursday morning and is continuing to have problems with performance after the microblogging service said it suffered a malicious attack.

The company first posted a message stating it was fighting off a "denial of service attack," and later another stating that "the site is back up, but we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack."

The system initially went down about 6:25 a.m. Pacific time.

Twitter in the past had problems scaling to meet demand, and outages were so frequent that the company created it's famed "Fail Whale" logo for messages about such problems.

Thursday's downtime, however, was different.

According to Wikipedia, denial-of-service attacks generally "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."

One common method of attack involves saturating the target machine with fake requests so the machine cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds slowly.




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