Pastebin gets taken down by a DDoS attack

THE HACKTIVIST'S FAVOURITE document sharing web site, Pastebin has been hit with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

The web site went down yesterday and the culprits are not yet known. It was confirmed on Twitter. "DDOS attack on pastebin, we are working on it...," wrote the organisation.

Later it added, "Slowly getting things back under control. Sorry for the downtime & slow loading site guys, we are doing our best to stop this attack."

The web site did not update this message, but we have visited Pastebin this morning and it appears to be working fine.

Anonymous uses Pastebin to post information about its hacks and its threats to organisations.

Its most recent posts include information gathered from the Stratfor think tank, which has been forced to keep its web site offline for over a week since it was attacked over the Christmas holiday.

No one has claimed credit for the attack on Pastebin, but at least one part of Anonymous suggested that it had nothing to do with the problem. "Heavy load? http://pastebin.com/ is down...", wrote the @Anonymouspress Twitter account, while other Anonymous supporters continued to post links to the web site and documents therein. µ