GitHub cyber attack: China suspected of turning Baidu web traffic into DDoS attack

US coding website GitHub says it is facing the largest cyber attack in its history. China is thought to be behind the attack, which began on Thursday and is ongoing.

GitHub is a coding website used by programmers worldwide but it also hosts several pages that allow users to view websites blocked in China, according to the New York Times.

The attack redirects search traffic from overseas users of China’s largest search engine Baidu to GitHub, the New York Times reported. The huge flow of traffic could crash smaller websites with limited web traffic capabilities. This method is known as a distributed denial of service or DDoS attack.

The attack is targeted specifically at two pages: GreatFire.org, a website that reports on Chinese government censorship and the Chinese language website of The New York Times, the New York Times reported.

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