BBC Websites Offline After Massive DDOS Attack

Hackers brought down the BBC's websites for several hours last week in a large-scale hacking attack.

Users trying to access BBC.com and related websites could only see an error message saying: "The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy."

"Sources within the BBC said the sites were offline thanks to what is known as a 'distributed denial of service' (DDOS) attack," the BBC reported. The BBC press office said it would not confirm or deny it had been hit by an attack. "We're aware of a technical issue affecting the BBC website and are working to fix this now," it said in a statement.

Despite continued problems with access to the sites, it said in a later update: "The BBC website is now back up and operating normally."

The BBC's international website BBC.com and its news application reached a readership of more than 101 million unique browsers a month earlier this year. Subsequently, a myysterious new hacking group calling itself New World claimed responsibility.  

DDOS attacks are used to slow down or disable a network by flooding it with communication requests.

ABC: http://ab.co/1JSKoTM