Twitter was disrupted for several hours on Thursday as it tried to defend itself against a Web attack, possibly originating in Russia or Georgia, that overwhelmed the microblogging site, New York Times reported.
The disruption was characterized as a denial-of-service attack, in which hackers route a deluge of traffic towards a targeted Web site. The Web site is overwhelmed trying to process the junk requests, so many of Twitter's 45 million legitimate visitors were unable to use the service.
Most computer security analysts did not cite a specific source of the attack Thursday.
But Bill Woodcock, a research director of the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit technical organization that tracks Internet traffic, said Thursday's attack was an extension of the conflict between Russia and Georgia. It was not clear who initiated the attack, he said, but likely "one side put up propaganda, the other side figured this out and is attacking them."
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