Cyber Terrorists Strike

Our friend Michelle Malkin is carrying a report of a denial of service attack which has shut down a number of blogs:

Many Hosting Matters-hosted blogs are down--including Instapundit, Power Line, and tons of others large and small. Hosting Matters' own website is also down.

The attack has apparently been confirmed to have originated in Saudi Arabia.

Here is a partial list of blogs that were taken down because of the attack:

Instapundit (***Glenn is posting on his back-up site here***)
Power Line
Captain's Quarters
Pundit Guy
Chuck Simmins
Small Dead Animals
Radioblogger
Hugh Hewitt
IMAO
Mountaineer Musings
Say Uncle
Counterterrorism Blog
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler

It looks like most of these are back up by now, except fro Power Line.

UPDATE:

The Dowager Viscontess writes that the blogs were down as of 8:00 PM CDT and Michelle Malkin is posting that they were back up by 10:25 PM EDT.

This is not just a practical joke. It is deadly serious. What if the terrorists go after the DOD or DHS computers. The fact is that the government uses over-the-counter anti virus and firewall software. The government's protective software is not updated as quickly as most civilian's software is. While most of us have automatic updating the government requires that all updates be vetted by their IT specialists before being installed.

There are other areas of vulnerability as well. As we learned back in the lead up to Y2K the nation's railroads use computers to control switching of the tracks. What if savages loyal to Osama bin Laden got control of that network?

What we are seeing here is a trial run.