Mastodon hit by DDoS attack, disrupting flagship server

As reported by TechCrunch, Mastodon's primary server, mastodon.social, experienced a significant distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Monday, rendering the instance intermittently unusable and causing widespread disruption for its users.

The cyberattack began early Monday morning, with Mastodon confirming the investigation around 7 a.m. ET. The attack flooded the server with junk web traffic, aiming to overwhelm its systems. By 9:05 a.m. ET, Mastodon announced a countermeasure had been implemented, restoring accessibility, though some instability persisted due to the ongoing nature of the attack.

This incident follows a similar DDoS attack that recently impacted Bluesky, another decentralized social network. Distributed denial-of-service attacks, while not involving data theft, can be highly disruptive by making services inaccessible.

Source: TechCrunch