Cyber attack shuts down Media Temple

Media Temple, a U.S.-based web hosting company, was hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack on Tuesday and was shut down as a result, CNET reports. The company hosts the websites for Adobe, ABC, Sony, NBC, Time, Volkswagen and Starbucks.

The attack was first noticed when the company's servers received a large amount of internet traffic stemming from outside the United States, which lasted for more than two and a half hours.

"Due to the sophistication of the attack, our normal DDoS firewall prevention techniques didn't block the attack adequately, as the traffic appears to be legitimate", Media Temple reported after the attack, CNET relays.

Media Temple also stated that while it blocked the flood of traffic from Asia, South America and Mexico at first, it had to remove the blocks later on.

DDoS attacks typically occur when an outside source intentionally sends too connection requests to a server, which then cannot respond to the increased traffic and shuts down. The attacks are considered violations of the Internet Architecture Board's internet proper use policy.