I don't think so....

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/07/2648530.htm

Cyber attacks take down Twitter, Facebook

Posted Fri Aug 7, 2009 7:10am AEST

 
Twitter and Facebook have reportedly teamed up with Google to investigate the attacks. (ABC News: Giulio Saggin, file photo)
Cyber attacks forced popular micro-blogging site Twitter offline overnight and caused performance problems for social-networking service Facebook.

Twitter was down for more than an hour before the California firm got it back online with a warning on the website that "we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack".

"Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an official company blog.

"Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users."

Facebook was "degraded" by an early-morning distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Palo Alto, California-based website, said Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker.

"No user data was at risk and we have restored full access to the site for most users," she said.

"We're continuing to monitor the situation to ensure that users have the fast and reliable experience they've come to expect from Facebook."

Twitter and Facebook have reportedly teamed up with internet powerhouse Google to investigate the attacks.

Hackers evidently employed classic DDoS attacks in which legions of zombie computers - machines infected with viruses - are commanded to simultaneously visit a website.

Such massive onslaught of demand can overwhelm website servers, slowing service or knocking it offline.

"Ten years ago we saw the first DDoS attacks take down some of the world's largest web sites," said Cisco chief security researcher Patrick Peterson.

"The irony here is that botnets - infected criminally-controlled consumer PCs - are the problem. Many of today's tweetless are part of the attack if their PC has been infected due to poor security."

- AFP

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It just so happens that my friends use my computer several times a week to check their "Facebook" messages..