BBC sites KO’d

A cyber attack — officially known as a “distributed denial of service” attack — took the BBC website and streaming service iPlayer offline Thursday.

Visitors to the sites were greeted by an error message, which stayed in place for about three hours.

The BBC initially described it as a “technical issue.” The media office tweeted:

“We’re aware of a technical issue affecting the BBC website and are working to fix this now. We’ll update you as soon as we can.”

A “distributed denial of service” occurs when a site is bombarded with more traffic than it can sustain.

The issue allowed the Twitterati to have fun at the BBC’s expense. #BBCDown was trending Thursday morning in the U.K., alongside #HappyNewYear.