WordPress.com Hit By Massive Denial-Of-Service Attack

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — WordPress.com, the blogging platform used for CBSLA.com and millions of bloggers around the world, was hit by hackers, paralyzing the system for several hours Thursday morning.

The system was targeted by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, the largest in its history, according to CNET.com.

Denial-of-service attacks overwhelm Web sites with requests, effectively shutting them down, CNET reported.

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg told CNET that the attack affected three of the company's data centers and was the largest in his company's six-year history. Mullenweg also said the attack may have been politically motivated against a non-English blog, but that has not been confirmed.

The attack did not affect self-hosted WordPress sites.

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