What — a — day.

It all started this morning when, from Twitter Status, this nugget of good news arrived, explaining the odd, intermittent service:

We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly.

For those of you (like me) who didn’t know what a Denial-of-Service or DoS Attack was at the beginning of the day, you probably know what it is now. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) defines a DoS Attack as the following:

In a denial-of-service (DoS) attack, an attacker attempts to prevent legitimate users from accessing information or services. By targeting your computer and its network connection, or the computers and network of the sites you are trying to use, an attacker may be able to prevent you from accessing email, web sites, online accounts (banking, etc.), or other services that rely on the affected computer.

The most common and obvious type of DoS attack occurs when an attacker “floods” a network with information. When you type a URL for a particular web site into your browser, you are sending a request to that site’s computer server to view the page. The server can only process a certain number of requests at once, so if an attacker overloads the server with requests, it can’t process your request. This is a “denial of service” because you can’t access that site.

This attack didn’t stop with Twitter, though, as Wired Magazine gave confirmation that Facebook was also under a DoS attack…

Facebook has confirmed to Wired.com that — like Twitter — it was the victim of a denial-of-service attack Thursday morning.

“Earlier this morning, Facebook encountered network issues related to an apparent distributed denial-of-service attack, that resulted in degraded service for some users,” responded Facebook spokeswoman Kathleen Loughlin via e-mail.

And now from several news sources, Epoch Times cited in this column, the popular blogging site LiveJournal is also being hammered and hammered hard…

Popular blog site LiveJournal also confirmed that it had been hit by a DoS attack. The company said that an attack had occurred at approximately 6 a.m. Pacific time.

The denial-of-service attacks are the latest in a round of such attacks. In July of this year, several websites run by the U.S. government, the New York Stock Exchange and websites in South Korea were taken down by similar attacks. While North Korea was suspected to be involved in those attacks, analysts have indicated in interviews with The Epoch Times that it was most likely the Chinese Communist Party helping North Koreans with the technology to launch the attacks.

In no way am I suggesting that the sky is falling, but I will give a bit of thought to what David Grizzly Smith asked me after my original posting on this morning’s assault on Twitter:

Given the whole thing with #iranelection, think the State Department will investigate the DDoS?

I’m hoping that someone up on Capitol Hill is paying attention. No, I don’t think this is Social Media’s 9-11, but something is most definitely afoot. This isn’t just a fluke happening. To hit Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal is impressive in a particularly scary way. It will be some time before the dust clears until we discover the responsible party behind these attacks, but right now we must all remain patient and (above all) calm. The creators and developers of these Social Media outlets are all working to keep their services online. I also have faith that other administrators to other popular sites are preparing for similar attacks. We, as the consumers, must keep our own heads about us and not flip out.

Today’s a weird, weird day…but consider this: Tomorrow’s Friday.

UPDATE

From the Twitter Status blog:

Thursday, 4:14 p.m. Site latency has continued to improve, however some web requests continue to fail. This means that some people may be unable to post or follow from the website.

From the blog comments, Aline sends in word from the New York Times that Google was also hit in the DoS onslaught. The article goes on to comment:

But Bill Woodcock, research director of the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit technical organization that tracks Internet traffic, said the attack was an extension of the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

It was not clear who initiated the attack, Mr. Woodcock said, but it was likely that “one side put up propaganda, the other side figured this out and is attacking them.” He said he found evidence that the attacks had originated from the Abkhazia region, a territory on the Black Sea disputed between Russia and Georgia.

Twitter is still a tag sluggish (although TweetDeck is running like a champ), but they are online and running. Remember, if your account starts acting squirrely, swing by Twitter Status and see what is going on back aboard the Mothership.