Blog host Wordpress.com was yesterday hit by an 'extremely large' DDoS attack that the company says is its largest and most sustained in its six-years of operation. All three data centers run by Automattic, the company that owns Wordpress, are affected. A DDoS entails sending huge volumes of traffic toward a targeted site--usually using illegally commandeered computers--with the intent of overwhelming an online site and denying its services to legitimate users.

Speaking to CNNMoney, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg said, "We suspect it may have been politically motivated against one of our non-English blogs, but we're still investigating and have no definitive evidence yet." Mullenweg noted that the problem is currently "neutralized" but warned of the possibility of it flaring up again. This particular attack made the news because Wordpress.com hosts a long list of "A-list" sites such as CNN, BBC, TechCrunch and Flickr, among others. Other services hosted by WordPress.com include the popular cloud-based Akismet service used by many blogs to filter against blog spam.

On the wake of Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) recent fiasco with its Gmail service, this must surely give rise to some consternation in the use and deployment of cloud services. At the time of this writing, Automattic's Status page shows a uniform green across all its services.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at CNNMoney
- check out this article at CNET News
- check out this article at eWeek

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