Hootsuite suffers DoS attack, reassures users
Social media management tool Hootsuite has recovered from a denial of service (DoS) attack which left users unable to use the system for some time yesterday.
CEO of the company, Ryan Holmes, emailed customers to reassure them that their personal data was safe.
As you may have noticed this morning, HootSuite services experienced downtime, which might have impacted you or your organization. At approximately 6:45 am PST we experienced what’s known as a denial of service attack (DoS). I’m writing today to let you know that the HootSuite Engineering and Security teams are working to mitigate the DoS attack and that there are no inherent security risks to your accounts, nor has any customer data been compromised.
DoS attacks occur when someone floods a service with traffic so that legitimate users can no longer access it. No data is stolen or compromised, but the interruption to the service can be costly for an organisation.
Holmes also took to the company blog to further reassure users
DOS attacks are common, crude tactics used by hackers to temporarily disable websites. The security of our customers’ information is our highest priority. It was not put at risk today.
We understand that these malicious actions are frustrating to our users. We want to thank you for your patience and for your continued trust in HootSuite.
Already scheduled posts were not affected, Holmes said.
The service is now back up and running, as normal.
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