Updated: The blogging platform provider suffers a DDoS attack that limits access to several of its services.Blogging platform provider Six Apart suffered a denial-of-service attack May 2 that limited access to several of its services for about 12 hours.
The attack, which began around 7 p.m. EDT, caused intermittent and limited availability for TypePad, LiveJournal, TypeKey, sixapart.com, movabletype.org and movabletype.com.
Six Apart reported that the sites were stable as of 7 a.m. EDT.
"What we know is that people are directly targeting Six Apart," said Anil Dash, vice president of Six Apart. "The attack has been mutating quickly. It's an arms race of sorts. Every time we make a change they make a change."
An e-mail from a Six Apart representative noted that Six Apart has maintained 99.99 percent uptime recently. Six Apart published an update page to inform people of service status.
A DDoS (distributed-denial-of-service) attack is the result of an overwhelming level of traffic directed at one or more sites. That traffic interferes with legitimate traffic and slows the response time of the sites' servers.
Dash said there could be a number of reasons for the attack. Hackers could be revenging themselves against content on a blog or group of blogs, or simply trying to take down a well-known blogging platform.
"If that's true, that's a shift from the old days, when people would try to take down the biggest fish they could fry, like the Amazons," said Dash. "Now people are trying to take down the sites which talk the loudest, the blogs."
Dash credited Six Apart's recent "massive series of upgrades" for withstanding the attack.
Six Apart last suffered stability problems when a "catastrophic failure" crippled TypePad's storage system in December 2005.
Six Apart has been growing recently. The company closed a $12 million venture capital deal, launched enterprise blogging tools, and rolled out a widget developer program.
"How does a start-up know it's made it big?" wrote Om Malik on his blog GigaOm. "Apparently, when your service is brought down by a massive distributed denial of service attack, you know you have joined a weird kind of hall of fame."
Editor's Note: This story was updated to include additional information and comments from Six Apart.
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