2 chapTer 1 Social Networking Infrastructure Attacks fIguRE 1.1 Twitter Is Down!!!! using these social networks for marketing, recruiting, and sales. Oh yeah, let's not forget that some companies are now using social networks such as Twitter to send mass distribution messages such as declaring an emergency. In other words, when a social network is brought down or compromised, people and companies are going to be affected and potentially lose money. What better of a situation is there for an attacker wanting to wreak havoc? what Happened to the Social Networks? So, what caused some of the social networks to be brought down? During the early morning hours of August 6, 2009, Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Google's Blogger, and YouTube were attacked by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Twitter encountered interrupted service for approximately 3 h, while Facebook users noticed longer periods of time in loading Web pages. Twitter experienced an entire outage during the time period. Users from across the world complained about not being able to send their Tweets. With over 44 million registered users, having any amount of downtime would cause serious problems. Companies that experience network outages realize severe financial losses. These losses are due to lost revenue from purchases, advertising, and productivity to name a few. In the case of Twitter, it wasn't the only company that lost revenue due to lack of productivity.