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Second Hack Feared, After Massive Cyberattack Knocks Major Websites Offline

Major websites and services across the East Coast were shut down for two hours Friday morning by a denial of service attack.
Hxdyl | Getty Images
/ Source: CNBC.com

The internet was dealt a crippling blow Friday morning as major websites, including Twitter, Spotify and Reddit were inaccessible.

As sites and services across the East Coast began to recover, word came of a possible second wave of attacks.

The culprit in both cases appeared to be a DDOS — that's distributed denial of service — attack on Dyn, an internet performance management company.

Related: The New Way You'll Get Hacked: Through That Banking App on Your Phone

Domain host company Dyn said the attack started at 7:10 a.m. and lasted for more than two hours.

It affected Dyn's Managed Domain Name System infrastructure, which serves companies including Amazon, Twitter, Spotify and CNBC.com.

A DDOS attack essentially floods a target with artificial traffic, knocking it offline.

It remains unclear who is behind the attacks — but the interruptions sent the internet into a tizzy.

While some were light-hearted, others peddled conspiracy theories...

... while others reminded us that with no Twitter, we were instead forced to make Friday small talk with our co-workers.