Twitter, Paypal, People.com, Github, Guardian.co.uk, The Playstation Network and a huge swath of other websites are down.
This is happening as hackers unleashed a large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the servers of Dyn, a major DNS host. It’s probably safe to assume that the two situations are related.
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 Twitter is down, well, good luck getting to Twitter. Some websites are coming back for some users, but it doesn’t look like the problem is fully resolved.
Below is a list of top website affected, some are back online.
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
Credit Karma
Eventbrite
Netflix
NHL.com
Fox News
Disqus
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