Internet in China shaken by biggest-ever DDoS attacks

The Chinese government is reporting that it experienced its largest-ever distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks over the weekend.

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, which made an announcement about the attacks on Sunday morning, the DDoS strikes were the most severe between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. local time on Sunday, “leading to slow or interrupted [internet] access” for users throughout the country.

The Wall Street Journal, which first publicized the news, discovered through security and site performance service provider CloudFlare that the attacks were directed at the registry allowing “.cn” domain access. The DDoS attacks resulted in a 32 percent drop in traffic in a 24-hour period, CloudFlare found after analyzing thousands of Chinese domains in its network.

It's not clear who is responsible or what the motive was.