Update, 1:03 p.m.: Despite Fox Business News' insistence that the hour-plus-long outage was caused by a cyberattack, NYT told TheWrap it believes it was caused by a scheduled maintenance update.
"We have no reason to believe this outage was the result of a cyber attack," NYT spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said.
Update, 11:07 a.m.: NYT spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told TheWrap: "The outage occurred within seconds of a scheduled maintenance update, which we believe was the cause. The site is back up in most places and we are working on full restoration."
Update, 10:06 a.m.: After over an hour, NYTimes.com is back up and running.
Original post:
"All the news that's fit to print" is going to have to stay in print — for a bit, anyway.
The website of the New York Times was down for a significant chunk of time Wednesday morning. Visitors were greeted by a "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" notice since just before 9 A.M., Pacific time Wednesday morning (noon eastern time).
Also read: N.Y. Times Attacked by Chinese Hackers
The New York Times' Twitter account attributed the outage to "technical difficulties … that we hope to resolve soon." Fox Business, meanwhile, is reporting that a "source close to the matter" said the site was hit by a cyber attack.
If true, it wouldn't be the first time. Chinese hackers attacked the site numerous times at the end of 2012, necessitating a memo from publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. to staff warning that "this type of activity is likely to continue" and advising them to take appropriate security measures.
Wesley Lowery, a reporter for the New York Times-owned Boston Globe (for now — soon it'll be in Red Sox owner John Henry's hands), tweeted an email from NYT's corporate communications attributing the outage to "a server issue that has resulted in our e-mail and Web site being unavailable."
"We believe the outage is the result of an internal issue, which we expect to be resolved soon," the email added.