Bluesky under “sophisticated” DDoS attack
Bluesky has been experiencing an intense Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack that disrupted some of its services.
Image by Anna Barclay/Getty Images
Bluesky has been experiencing an intense Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack that disrupted some of its services.
The social media platform said in a security update that it first received a report of “intermittent app outages” just before midday Pacific time on April 15th.
It said its team “worked through the night to mitigate a sophisticated DDoS attack,” adding that it intensified throughout the day.
Our team received a report of intermittent app outages at about 11:40pm PDT on April 15, 2026. They worked through the night to mitigate a sophisticated Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which intensified throughout the day.
undefined Bluesky (@bsky.app) April 17, 2026 at 12:47 AM
“We have not seen any evidence of unauthorized access to private user data,” it said.
Downdetector, which monitors the status of websites and online services, shows hundreds of reports flooding in throughout April 16th and subsiding in the early hours of April 17th.
Bluesky said the attack impacted its application, with users experiencing interruptions in service for their feeds, notifications, threads, and search.
What is a DDoS attack?
The Distributed Denial-of-Service, or DDoS, attacks are used to slow down or take down a website or online service by inundating it with traffic from a large number of bots – which explains the “distributed” part.
Bots generating this fake traffic are spread across multiple locations through infected computers and do not have a single host.
Check if your data has been leaked
The aim of a DDoS attack is to trigger a “denial of service” response for people using the target system, which takes the target network offline. It can take hours or even days to recover from the attack.
Bad actors use this method for various reasons, often to attack many different sectors, and some methods are more sophisticated – and dangerous – than others, with DDoS attacks now considered a strategic threat in some sectors.
Cybercriminals leverage high bandwidths and advanced computational tools to launch efficient and cheap DDoS attacks. The DDoS as a service industry also disguises attackers, making it hard for authorities to track them down.
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