The online code sharing site GitHub was caught in the crosshairs of a massive DDoS attack that had been continuing for more than four days. Due to this onslaught of never ending traffic, many of the site’s services were disrupted at different times of the day. According to GitHub officials the attackers wanted to remove some specific content from the website.

Over the past few days GitHub have put up multiple defences and have been filtering traffic in order to reduce the effects.

China, at the heart of DDoS

As explained by Ars Technica the attack once again originates from China. The hackers used a malicious JavaScript code to infect thousands of computers in order to make them bots for the DDoS attack. The original infection, targeted websites using the analytics services of Baidu, the Chinese search engine.

Once the army was assembled, the hackers hammered GitHub servers using a variety of sophisticated techniques, changing and adapting to get through their defenses. As admitted by a GitHub official, this was the largest attack the website had ever seen.

After several days of inconsistent services, it seems GitHub has successfully thwarted the attack and is back in operation.

Have a nice (DDoS-free) day!