If you’re wondering why it seemed like half the internet is shut down today, it’s not issues with your router. Dyn, which is the DNS provider for heavyweights including Twitter, Reddit, Spotify and AirBnB reported a DDoS attack against their software that brought down many of their services on the East Coast this morning. The outage now seems to have spread to European servers and Dyn is still investigating the source of the attack.
The company first noticed the attack at 11:10 UTC (7:10 a.m. Eastern), and according to its website has been working on mitigating the issue. Dyn reports that “some customers may experience increased DNS query latency and delayed zone propagation during this time.” However, as of 10:00 a.m. Eastern it appeared most of the sites were back online.
A DDoS — or distributed denial of service — attack against a massive DNS company like Dyn, which hosts the IPs associated with the URLs for the aforementioned companies, has pretty far reaching consequences. Through a distributed and coordinated attack, hackers can often bring down a computer’s system for hours or even days, making the service no longer viable for users.
This map shows the internet outages that plagued the east coast this morning.
DDoS attacks are a popular strategy of the hacker group Anonymous, who have brought down both the KKK’s website and Donald Trump with denial of service attacks.
While we don’t know who is behind the attack yet, given that they’ve knocked out some of the most highly trafficked sites in America, it’s probably someone who knows what they’re doing.
The attack only caused outages on the east coast of the United States but the company encourages any customers with questions to reach out the Dyn’s technical support team.
Reported server problems spiked in the past 24 hours.
Dyn says they will post updates on their website as information becomes available. The FBI and Department of Homeland security are also investigating the attack according to Reuters.
This story was updated at 4:00 p.m.
