Social Media 2009 Outage Day 2: Everyone's Up Except Twitter
Yesterday, Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and Google's Blogger were targeted by a person or persons unknown, in a denial-of-service attack (DDOS) that attempted to silence the voice of one individual. The target in question was a Georgian blogger who goes by the name of "Cyxymu" online, according to recent reports from CNET. While Google withstood the attack, the other services suffered. LiveJournal and Twitter went down completely and Facebook struggled throughout the day.
As we now roll into day two of the "great social media outage of 2009," you may be surprised to learn that it's not over yet. Although Facebook and LJ have recovered, Twitter is still having issues. Not only was the site down once again early this morning, Twitter developers using the API are complaining that the company is sending mixed messages by reporting that they're "back up" - when in reality many Twitter applications are still unusable.
This morning, Twitter was once again taken down by the DDOS attack. According to Ken Godskind, Chief Strategy Officer for Alertsite, Twitter's website availability was less than 100% in the midnight, 3, 4, and 5 am hours EST. As of 6 am EST, the site has again recovered. Unfortunately, many third-party Twitter applications are still affected.
Twitter Developers Want Communication, Too
In a recent discussion thread in the Twitter Development Group, Twitter developer Jesse Stay of the popular SocialToo application asked:
"Why is Biz saying things are "back in action" when apps like mine, and many other very large names are still broken from it. Sending this message to users sends a false message to them stating they should expect we should be up as well. At a very minimum, please state the API is still having issues."
Other developers quickly chimed in agreeing, noting that Twitter has yet to communicate the API status to developers, leaving them in the dark as to when their apps will work again. It seems that some developers have been experiencing issues with everything from oAuth sign-ins to timeouts to applications being completely down. Paul Kinlan, developer of the Twollo application, an app that helps you find followers with similar interests, even said that he had to refund a paying customer because of the situation. No doubt he is not alone.
While the developers are generally sympathetic to the situation and understand that fighting off the attack is priority number one, what they're finding hard to deal with is the lack of communication. Throughout the attack, Twitter has updated their Status Blog with notes about the service itself, but nothing about the API. Developers are frustrated and unsure of how to address the situation with their users given that Twitter has not provided any official information to them either through the blog or their own Twitter account.
We know that Twitter's architecture has made it more vulnerable to this type of attack than Google or even Facebook, but in situations like this, communication is key. Hopefully today Twitter will do one of two things: either (preferably) stabilize its service and API or (at the very least) let developers know the status.
Update: Looks like Twitter listened: http://status.twitter.com/post/157979213/restoring-api-and-sms.
Update 2: See also our coverage of Cyxymu, the apparent target for these attacks.
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So today is the day that I decided to try out FriendFeed. I guess it was not the best day to do that on account of the integration problems...
Posted by: Marc A. Price
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August 7, 2009 8:41 AM
Not surprising. Twitter has always had trouble keeping up with their own growth. Very very poor planning.
Social Media website companies should take necessary steps to avoid inconvenience in future with this DDos.
The way I see this, is that .01% of the Twitter userbase is complaining because Twitter isn't talking to them in a speedy fashion. I'm sorry, but Twitter has better things to do that communicate in a timely manner with a couple thousand of its users. It does, however, have a responsibility to communicate with the Twitter community as a whole. I can guarantee most people on Twitter couldn't tell you what an API is, or really care that it's fully working or not.
Keep the API down!
Thats what the Twitter Zombie Bots use to pollute our streams!
We also had hard times all day with our new favit.com & twitter integration, exactly the Oauth part was hanging for terribly long!
Livejournal is not back up here---at least for me. Friday, August 7th @ 20:53H EST.
It was inevitable that we would eventually see these kinds of attacks on social networking sites. I love Twitter (my personal learning network, water cooler, and help desk) and Facebook (keeping in touch with friends old and new, family, colleagues, and online co-edubloggers), but I don’t expect these sites to be functioning 24-7-365 because I know that eventually there will be an attack or some other tech issue that results in downtime.
I think some of the news commentary that made fun of Twitter users was uncalled-for and juvenile. Not everyone panicked when it went down. Sure, it was inconvenient, but many of us had backup plans for staying in touch with anyone that we really needed to stay in touch with.
I really cannot understand all these things. Apparently, I cannot access Yahoo, Facebook, Friendster, Google Yahoo. I am wondering if this Dos attack caused some problem to my computer, because it was mentioned here that Facebook is back to the business but how come I still cannot access it, the page does not load everytime I try. Can anyone clarify this for me, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much.
I am still unable to access Livejournal here, but everything else is working fine for me. According to LJ's status message at status.livejournal.org, they are up and running, but I (and judging from a search I did on Twitter) many others still can't access the site. I wasn't able to log on yesterday, and I still can't today.
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LiveJournal still down for me at 11:45am CDT. It's getting majorly annoying, seeing as how LJ tells me its up, my sister tells me she can get access, and I can't even get onto LJ support to find out what's going on.
It is 3:53 in Chicago and Livejournal is still down.
The sites are saying LJ is back up, but I'm not getting it. 2008.08.08 16:05CT
Livejournal is still down here for me in Massachusetts. I haven't been able to access it since yesterday. Everyone around me is telling me it's up but I can't get anything to load.
Livejournal is still down here in most of New York City from what I've been hearing, as well as on my own computer as of 6:36 PM EST
It was very annoying to find out that I couldn't use Twitter as it is part of my job description! Yet, I must admit, I discovered one thing during this outage: I am 100% addicted to Twitter! I felt that I needed my "Twitter Fix" and I needed it now http://bit.ly/k3tQR! Sad thing really! But, nevertheless, there were ways around it for the addicts like myself, namely, TwitIq! Here is a list of some more ways to use Twitter while in outage mode! http://bit.ly/XdS7E 2) Enjoy!
Have some of you who still can't login to Livejournal tried deleting your cookies and temporarily internet data? I live in New York and had a problem to even go into the page, and yet when I deleted those data, it worked again!
It was also reported that Twitter was supposedly used for Botnet Controllers - before Arbor Networks stepped in and shut the botnet controller down.
Too bad, they could have found the source had they waited.
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