NY Times Computers Shut Down by Apparent Attack

Internet connections at the New York Times were interrupted for at least several hours on Tuesday after the paper's computers were flooded with information in an apparent attack.

"We don't know that it was malicious, but there seems to be no innocent explanation," wrote company network administrator Terry Schwadron in an e-mail to newsroom employees.

Shortly after 2:00 p.m. New York time, the Times computers "started receiving a huge amount of electronic transmissions that flooded the machinery that protects the paper from hacker attacks," according to Schwadron's e-mail, in what he called "denial of service activity."

The New York Times Web site (https://www.nytimes.com) was online as of Tuesday evening. The site was vandalized with pornography and expletives in a 1998 attack.

A spokeswoman for the Times, reading a statement, said: "Some New York Times employees are experiencing difficulty accessing the Internet through their computers. Our technical staff is trying to determine the reason for this. At this time, we do not know the cause."

News source: Reuters