Users reported early Wednesday that websites such as Twitter, Spotify, CNN, among others reported to be down. The problem has been reported to a large scale Denial of Service attacks by hackers to DYN, a major DNS host.
A Denial of Service attack is an attack where a large amount of data or requests are sent to a web site or host to attempt to flood it with so much information, that it takes down the service or stops others from gaining access.
Domain Name Servers (DNS) act as the Internet’s phone book. Basically, they facilitate your request to go to a certain webpage and make sure you are taken to the right place. If the DNS provider that handles requests for a site is down, you cannot get to the web site.
As of 9:45am, DYN reported that the problem has been resolved and internet traffic should be flowing as usual.
The eastern United States was mainly affected by the issue.
Sites reported to have been affected
- ActBlue
- Basecamp
- Big cartel
- Box
- Business Insider
- CNN
- Cleveland.com
- Esty
- Github
- Grubhub
- Guardian.co.uk
- HBO Now
- Iheart.com (iHeartRadio)
- Imgur
- Intercom
- Intercom.com
- Okta
- PayPal
- People.com
- Playstation Network
- Recode
- Spotify
- Squarespace Customer Sites
- Starbucks rewards/gift cards
- Storify.com
- The Verge
- Twillo
- Urbandictionary.com (lol)
- Weebly
- Wired.com
- Wix Customer Sites
- Yammer
- Yelp
- Zendesk.com
- Zoho CRM