GitHub has been hit with a massive DDoS attack from China

GitHub is a popular American code management platform that allows developers to put their coding projects online with everyone from massive corporations to small independent groups hosting projects on the website. Unfortunately, the website has been dealing with a massive DDoS attack over the past few days that, unsurprisingly, seems to have originated from China. 

A popular U.S. coding website is enduring an onslaught of Internet traffic meant for China’s most popular search engine, and security experts say the episode likely represents an attempt by China to shut down anticensorship tools. The attack on San Francisco-based GitHub Inc., a service used by programmers and major tech firms world-wide to develop software, appears to underscore how China’s Internet censors increasingly reach outside the country to clamp down on content they find objectionable. The Cyberspace Administration of China didn’t respond to a request for comment Sunday. Security experts said the traffic onslaught—called a distributed denial-of-service attack in Internet circles—directed huge amounts of traffic from overseas users of Chinese search giant Baidu Inc. to GitHub, paralyzing GitHub’s website at times.