The Library of Congress in the US experienced a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, it announced via social media.
On July 17th, “the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution” tweeted that its websites were “experiencing technical difficulties”.
The library also released the same message on Facebook, while thanking people for their patience as it sought to fix the problems caused by its main website outage.
On the 19th, it also confirmed that this was no routine web malfunction – what had taken its site – and that of the US Copyright Office – offline was a DDoS attack. It stated on Facebook:
The Library's websites are currently experiencing technical difficulties. We are aware of the problems, and are working to correct them.
— Library of Congress (@librarycongress) July 17, 2016
At the time of writing, it is unclear why the Library of Congress was targeted and who was behind the DDoS attack.
Last year, cloud service provider Akamai reported that DDoS attacks have more than doubled over the last 12 months.
It remains an effective tool for attackers and can keep websites offline for days. This can prevent organizations and businesses from being able to offer their services, which can be damaging financially and from a brand point of view.