The New York Times was subjected to a ‘malicious external hack' yesterday, according to a spokeswoman.

The attack crippled the website, making it unavailable to many users from around 3pm ET. This is the second time the website has gone offline in the last two weeks.

Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the New York Times posted on Twitter that the analysis of the downtime was ‘most likely result of malicious external attack.' She added that they were working hard to fix it.

A Twitter account reported to represent the Syrian Electronic Army, an internet hacktivist group who support the Assad regime claimed responsibility for the attack on the New York Times.

At 4.23pm the New York Times posted the update above.

A mere three minutes later they posted another update ‘We will continue to publish the news.' linking to their latest report on Syria. This link led to a very basic version of the usual website which seemed to be up and running, albeit slowly.

The last attack happened on Wednesday 14th August. The site disappeared around 11am, along with their mobile application. It was offline for two hours before the administration team got it back up and running.

Kitguru says: We would imagine this isn't the last of the attacks on the New York Times.

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