(VOVworld)-Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, Soundcloud, PayPal and several other sites have been affected by three web attacks. All the firms are customers of a company called Dyn, which they use to help users find their sites online.

Net-connected cameras are helping many attackers deluge targets with data- Photo: Eyewire

In quick succession on Friday, Dyn was swamped by two attacks that made the sites of its customers hard to reach. It is not clear who is behind the attack or why Dyn has been hit. The FBI and US Department of Homeland Security said they were investigating. Reddit, Twitter, Etsy, Github, Soundcloud, Spotify and many others were all reported as being hard to reach by users throughout the attack, which lasted about two hours. Access to sites such as the New York Times, Paypal, Pinterest and Tumblr, as well as some cable firms, was also reported as being intermittent. In a statement on its website, Dyn posted information about the incidents and said it had been subjected to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.