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'Technical issue' hits BBC websites Web attack knocks BBC websites offline
(33 minutes later)
"Technical issues" made the BBC's websites intermittently unavailable on Thursday morning. All the BBC's websites were unavailable early on Thursday morning because of a large web attack.
The problems began about 0700 GMT and meant visitors to the site saw a message informing them about an "internal error". The problems began about 0700 GMT and meant visitors to the site saw an error message rather than webpages.
News stories and indexes either failed to appear or were occasionally viewable if users re-loaded them. Sources within the BBC said the sites were offline thanks to what is known as a "distributed denial of service" attack.
A statement tweeted by the BBC's press office said the corporation was aware of the issue and was working to fix it. An earlier statement tweeted by the BBC laid the blame for problems on a "technical issue".
The problems meant that the main site run by the BBC was unreachable. In addition there were reports on Twitter that the main iPlayer catch-up service and iPlayer Radio app were also not working properly. In the message the corporation said it was aware of the ongoing trouble and was working to fix it so sites, services and pages were reachable again.
Social media reaction was swift. Many urged the BBC to get the site back up quickly and lamented how long it was taking to fix the technical troubles. It has now emerged that a web attack technique known as a "distributed denial of service" attack was causing the patchy response. This aims to knock a site offline by swamping it with more traffic than it can handle.
The attack on the BBC hit the main website as well as associated services including the main iPlayer catch-up service and iPlayer Radio app which were also not working properly.
The BBC has yet to confirm or deny that such an attack was responsible for the problems.
Social media reaction to the trouble was swift. Many urged the BBC to get the site back up quickly and lamented how long it was taking to fix the technical troubles.
By 1030 GMT the site was largely working again though some pages and indexes took longer than normal to load.By 1030 GMT the site was largely working again though some pages and indexes took longer than normal to load.
In July 2014, the BBC's iPlayer and many of its associated sites were offline for almost an entire weekend.In July 2014, the BBC's iPlayer and many of its associated sites were offline for almost an entire weekend.
The fault was traced to a database that sits behind the catch-up TV service.The fault was traced to a database that sits behind the catch-up TV service.