DDos attack affects thousands of websites, Twitter, Paypal, Netflix, Github, Guardian, PSN, others down.

Twitter, Paypal, People.com, Github, Guardian.co.uk, The Playstation Network and a huge swath of other websites are down.

This is happening as hackers unleashed a large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the servers of Dyn, a major DNS host. It’s probably safe to assume that the two situations are related.

Domain Name Servers (DNS) act as the Internet’s phone book. Basically, they facilitate your request to go to a certain webpage and make sure you are taken to the right place.

If the DNS provider that handles requests for Twitter is down, well, good luck getting to Twitter. Some websites are coming back for some users, but it doesn’t look like the problem is fully resolved.

Below is a list of top website affected, some are back online.

ActBlue

Basecamp

Big cartel

Box

Business Insider

CNN

Cleveland.com

Esty

Github

Grubhub

Guardian.co.uk

HBO Now

Iheart.com (iHeartRadio)

Imgur

Intercom

Intercom.com

Okta

PayPal

People.com

Pinterest

Playstation Network

Recode

Reddit

Spotify

Squarespace Customer Sites

Starbucks rewards/gift cards

Storify.com

The Verge

Twillo

Twitter

Urbandictionary.com (lol)

Weebly

Wired.com

Wix Customer Sites

Yammer

Yelp

Zendesk.com

Zoho CRM

Credit Karma

Eventbrite

Netflix

NHL.com

Fox News

Disqus