BBC websites Hacked

Official statements from the BBC today blamed a more than three-hour outage of the news services’ many Web sites on a “technical issue.” However, sources within the BBC attributed the problem to a large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

The issue was first identified today around 2 a.m. EST (Eastern Standard Time) and had been resolved by 5:30 a.m. EST. The attack not only knocked the main BBC news Web site offline, but also the BBC’s iPlayer streaming video catch-up service and iPlayer Radio app.

“The BBC Web site is now back up and operating normally. We apologise for any inconvenience you may have experienced,” a BBC spokesperson told us, adding that the BBC is not releasing any further details about the causes of the “technical issue.” According to reports, however, BBC correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones tweeted, “Sources – BBC suffered a DdOS – a distributed denial of service attack. But services are now being restored.”