DOS Attack Causes Twitter, Spotify, and Other Major Services To Be Down

Someone attacked a key part of the Internet's infrastructure the morning of Oct 21, causing some major services such as Twitter, Spotify and Airbnb to be inaccessible for some users. The attack targeted Dyn, a company that helps people connect to websites, with a huge amount of traffic in an attempt to knock the service offline, according to Dyn's director of Internet analysis, Doug Madory. The digital assault appears to have started around 7:30 am Eastern, and Dyn said it was resolved at roughly 9:20 am.

dThe service Dyn provides is called the Domain Name System. It works sort of like a phone book for the Internet — it translates URLs into the numerical IP addresses for the servers that actually host sites so your browser can connect to them. This type of attack is commonly known as a distributed denial of service, or DDoS attack. The effects of the attack were intermittent, and many of the details remain scarce, although it appears to have primarily affected users on the East Coast, according to Dyn.