Internet blackout: Why you can’t read your favorite NJ websites today

If you can read this, the internet is working. For now.

Large swaths of the internet on Friday suffered major outages after a likely server attack by hackers. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says it's investigating.

The intermittent blackouts affected some of the most heavily trafficked websites, including Twitter, The New York Times, CNN, Netflix, Spotify, Reddit and the Playstation Network.

New Jersey 101.5's mobile site also went down Friday afternoon, as did other New Jersey news sites, although the cause was not immediately known.

Dyn, a domain name service provider, reported the attack at 7:10 a.m. Friday.

The attack is known as a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS.

Bloomberg Technology explains how the attacks work, and how such attacks are becoming more common because of weak security measures.

While hitting the refresh button would be a web surfer's first move, Apple Insider says refresh requests only aggravate the attack.

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