Screenshots, a popular blog by Jeff Ooi, is down due to suspected distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

According to Ooi, an IT consultant, the first round of attacks took place around 7pm on Sunday.

The network operation centre in Cyberjaya, where the Screenshots server is located, managed to unplug the attack within minutes after it was detected.

He said that Screenshots' voluntary web team eventually was able to restart the blog site around midnight last night.

A (DDoS) attack is one in which a host of compromised computers are used as a launchpad to attack a single target, thereby causing denial of service for users of the targeted system.

The flood of incoming traffic to the target system essentially forces the server to shut down, thereby "denying service" to legitimate users.

Second attack

However, a second round of DDOS attack took place at noon today.

Ooi decided to bring down his blogsite to allow the experts to perform a thorough digital forensic investigation.

"Expect the site to be down for the next 72 hours," Ooi told malaysiakini .

He thanked the readers for their show of support through SMS and email messages and apologised for the inconvenience caused.

Screenshots, which appears in malaysiakini frontpage, has been dubbed as Malaysia's most influential blog.

Last week, a police report was lodged against the blog for "inciting religious hatred".