Twitter昨日遭遇攻擊 癱瘓兩個多小時

What might have been no more than a teenage prank knocked Twitter, the fast-growing internet communications service, offline for more than two hours yesterday.

迅速壯大的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)通信服務(wù)網(wǎng)站Twitter昨日受到攻擊，中斷服務(wù)達(dá)兩個多小時，這可能不過是青少年的惡作劇。

The micro-blogging firm, whose service allows text and web posting of messages of 140 characters or less, said it was hit by a denial-of-service attack, in which thousands of personal computers attempt simultaneous connections, slowing the target site's response to a virtual standstill.

這家微型博客服務(wù)公司表示，網(wǎng)站受到拒絕服務(wù)攻擊(denial-of-service, DOS)。DOS指的是成千上萬個人電腦同時試圖連接某個網(wǎng)站，致使目標(biāo)站點響應(yīng)速度變慢，近乎完全癱瘓。Twitter允許用戶發(fā)表不超過140個字符的文本和網(wǎng)絡(luò)帖子。

The same type of cyber-attack crippled US and South Korean government websites last month, although Twitter has fewer obvious enemies. Other victims of denial-of-service attacks yesterday included the blogging company LiveJournal, which was shut down for a few hours and the social network Facebook, which slowed to a crawl. The popular Gawker network of news and gossip sites was shut down by a similar attack on Monday.

上個月，美國和韓國的一些政府網(wǎng)站曾因同一類型的網(wǎng)絡(luò)攻擊而癱瘓，盡管Twitter的“敵對方”顯然不像它們那么多。昨天受到DOS攻擊的還有博客網(wǎng)站LiveJournal和社交網(wǎng)站Facebook，前者中斷服務(wù)數(shù)小時，而后者的響應(yīng)速度極其緩慢。周一，深受歡迎的新聞與八卦網(wǎng)站Gawker也因為類似的攻擊而癱瘓。

Twitter attracted 44.5m visitors in June, about half in the US, according to comScore.

據(jù)comScore稱，Twitter今年6月的訪問量達(dá)4450萬人次，其中約一半來自美國。

“It's rare to have a homepage of a top-500 site be completely down for multiple hours,” said researcher Ben Rushko of Keynote Systems, which measures website responsiveness.

“一個前500強網(wǎng)站的首頁徹底癱瘓幾個小時十分罕見，”Keynote Systems研究員本•拉什科(Ben Rushko)表示。該公司負(fù)責(zé)測算網(wǎng)站的響應(yīng)能力。

Set up in 2006, Twitter has been plagued by outages due to technical problems in the past and security professionals said it probably did not have the same capacity to withstand attacks as Facebook and other more established internet groups.

自2006年成立以來，Twitter過去由于技術(shù)問題一直受到癱瘓困擾，安全專家稱，該網(wǎng)站抵御攻擊的能力，可能比不上Facebook和其它成熟的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司。

The outages once again underscored the fragility of internet communications at a time when Google, Amazon and others are touting the advantages of moving corporate work into the so-called cloud, where data and programs are accessible only via remote connections.

此次癱瘓事件再次凸顯出互聯(lián)網(wǎng)通信的脆弱性，而目前谷歌(Google)、亞馬遜(Amazon)和其它互聯(lián)網(wǎng)企業(yè)正鼓吹在所謂的“云計算”中開展企業(yè)業(yè)務(wù)的優(yōu)勢。在“云計算”模式中，用戶只能通過遠(yuǎn)程連接獲取數(shù)據(jù)和程序。

Denial-of-service attacks have been an everyday occurrence since 2000, when Yahoo and Ebay, the online auction service, crashed. Since then, many large companies have beefed up their software and hardware defences. But the methods and firepower used in attacks have improved as well.

自2000年雅虎(Yahoo)和在線拍賣網(wǎng)站Ebay癱瘓以來，DOS攻擊事件屢見不鮮。從那以后，許多大型企業(yè)已增強了自身的軟硬件防御能力。但攻擊的方式和火力也有所加強。

Identifying attackers has proved almost impossible.

找出攻擊者是幾乎不可能的任務(wù)。

Security veterans working on the Korean case said that last month's attack was most likely by a disaffected teen or an online fraud gang demonstrating its might, and either type of suspect could have taken aim at Twitter and LiveJournal as well.

研究韓國DOS攻擊事件的資深安全專家表示，上個月的攻擊最有可能是心懷不滿的青少年、或是互聯(lián)網(wǎng)詐騙團伙為了顯示自身能力而發(fā)起的，這兩類嫌犯也都有可能把Twitter和LiveJournal當(dāng)作攻擊目標(biāo)。

譯者/管婧