Pavla Tolonen reports on the DDOS attacks that have crippled Twitter, the micro-blogging service.

Micro-blogging site Twitter crashed today leaving 24 million visitors without access to the website. Twitter was hit by numerous denial-of-service attacks (DDOS) at 3 PM (GMT), and while the website reappeared active for a time, it failed to allow users to log-in.

Described by The Guardian as the technological equivalent of ringing a door bell and draining the person who answers of a huge chunk of energy, the attack seems almost too harmless to be true.

It seems evident that hitting Twitter with such a vast amount of DDOS attacks would prepare a hacker, or indeed a team of hackers, for another coup, on another website which has far more valuable information. The age-old blackmailing technique is another DDOS attack favourite, shutting down whole websites before key events or fundraisers, and demanding a considerable fee to cease attacks.

Twitter has never been hit before, but perhaps it was just a matter of time since the company has grown exceptionally in the past year. London, according to Ofcom, is the most Twitter-subscribed city in the world with 2.4 million users.

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