New York Times website subject to 'malicious external attack'

Company confirms it is 'working to fix' the problem which left the website unavailable to many readers on Tuesday afternoon

• Adam Gabbatt in New York
• theguardian.com, Tuesday 27 August 2013 17.25 EDT
• Jump to comments (17)

The NYT had previously experienced an outage on 14 August. Photograph: Alamy

The New York Times website was the subject of a "malicious external attack" on Tuesday, a spokeswoman said.

The attack left the website unavailable to many users from about 3pm ET. It was the second time the NYT's site has gone offline in the past two weeks.

Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the New York Times, said on Twitter that the the initial assessment was that the issue was "most likely result of malicious external attack" that the company was "working to fix".

Eileen Murphy @NYTeileen

re: http://nytimes.com  - initial assessment - issue is most likely result of malicious external attack. working to fix

4:26 PM - 27 Aug 2013

A Twitter account purporting to represent the Syrian Electronic Army, an internet hacktivist group supportive of the Assad regime, claimed responsibility.

The problems began just after 3pm ET, and initially appeared to be intermittent. At 4:23pm, the NYT posted on Twitter:

The New York Times        ✔ @nytimes

The New York Times Web site is experiencing technical difficulties. We are working on fully restoring the site.

4:23 PM - 27 Aug 2013

Three minutes later it declared that it would "continue to publish the news" and linked to a report on Syria which appeared to be hosted on a basic version of its site.

The New York Times        ✔ @nytimes

We will continue to publish the news. Here is our latest report on Syria: http://nyti.ms/12ICzNQ 

4:26 PM - 27 Aug 2013

The newspaper's website previously went down on Wednesday 14 August. The site vanished just after 11am along with its mobile app. It remained offline for two hours before returning. At the time of that incident, Murphy said it was caused by maintenance work and there was "no reason to believe that this was the result of a cyber-attack".

It was also alleged on Tuesday that Twitter had been the victim of an attack by the SEA. Bryan Ries, a senior editor at Newsweek, tweeted that the social media website had "lost its domain to the Syrian Electronic Army".

Brian Ries        ✔ @moneyries

Um guys I think @twitter just lost its domain to the Syrian Electronic Army http://whois.domaintools.com/twitter.com  pic.twitter.com/eDUmlCG6gn

4:56 PM - 27 Aug 2013

Ries shared a link showing that the admin name and email for the domain name "twitter.com" had been changed to "SEA SEA" and "sea@sea.sy" respectively.

The SEA also claimed it "owned" Twitter's domain:

SyrianElectronicArmy @Official_SEA16

Hi @Twitter, look at your domain, its owned by #SEA :) http://whois.domaintools.com/twitter.com  pic.twitter.com/ck7brWtUhK

4:55 PM - 27 Aug 2013

But there was no apparent disruption to Twitter's service.

The Syrian Electronic Army allegedly hacked the Washington Post's website on 15 August. Managing editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz said the website had fallen victim to a "sophisticated phishing attack to gain password information".

The SEA is a collection of computer hackers who support the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. They have used denial of service attacks and other methods to target opposition groups and western media websites. The group's relationship with Assad's government is the subject of debate.