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Twitter Shuts Down After Cyber Attack: How Does That Affect Facebook and Black Tweeters?
The
popular social networking site, Twitter, has been hit by a denial of
service attack. This type of attack essential means that a virus is
flooding the site with so much traffic that it has to shut down. The
site crashed at approximately 9:30 a.m. EST on Thursday, August 6,
2009. Because many on Twitter have their Twitter accounts linked to
their Facebook accounts, Facebook and other social networking sites
have also been affected.
“There’s no indication that
this attack is related to any previous activities. We are currently the
target of a denial of service attack,” said site founder Biz Stone.
“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 defend and later investigate.”
The site was back online for a brief time around 11:30 a.m. but remained under attack until it had to shut down once again.
The attack raises the question; with so many people being so connected,
how many people could possibly have their social lives disrupted by
cyber attacks? Increasingly, friends and families are staying connected
solely via social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook — to the
point where many have admitted to having each others’ Facebook profile
addresses but not having each others’ phone numbers. Also, more people
are beginning to get their news and information from social networking
sites. Untold numbers of people found out about the death of superstar
Michael Jackson and former NFL quarterback, not via CNN, but after
logging onto Twitter. President Barack Obama’s administration has been
visionary in utilizing sites like Twitter and Facebook to communicate
with the people.
As we all become more enamored with sites like Twitter and Facebook,
it’s important to always remember that cyber networking has its place
and can be both fun and informative, but it should never take the place
of traditional, less-hackable interactions.
–todd williams
