White House confirms third DoS attack in a month

The White House Web site has been hit by its third denial of service attack this month, which rendered the site inaccessible for more than six hours on Tuesday.

The hacker attempt on whitehouse.gov, which crashed the site, lasted from 2pm EDT until after 8pm EDT. The White House has confirmed that the build of traffic created through the attack was "heavy enough to block most legitimate users".

On 4 May, the whitehouse.gov site was taken down for more than three hours by a similar attack, purported to be linked to a string of Web site hacks and defacements organised by Chinese and pro-Chinese Internet vandals during the first week of May. The Hackers Union of China admitted responsibility for numerous attacks on US government and commercial sites at the start of this month.

It has not been confirmed whether the same group was behind Tuesday's attack.

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