Knight Ridder Newspaper Sites Hit By Denial-Of-Service AttacksKnight Ridder Newspaper Sites Hit By Denial-Of-Service Attacks

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- The Web sites of Knight Ridder's 31 daily newspapers slowed to a crawl or were made inaccessible by a denial-of-service attack that lasted for several hours earlier this week.

The sites, which include the Internet homes of The Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and San Jose Mercury News, came under attack Tuesday morning and technicians had restored the services by 2:45 p.m. EDT, said Amy Dalton, spokeswoman for Knight Ridder Digital.

"Depending on when and what time you tried to access the sites, you may have received a slow response or no response," she said Wednesday.

The attack is under investigation and measures are being taken to prevent them in the future, she said.

A denial-of-service attack bombards a Web server with so much data that the machine becomes unusable. Recent notable DoS attacks have been directed against the sites of the Recording Industry Association of America and the Arab satellite television network Al-Jazeera.

Based in San Jose, Knight Ridder is the No. 2 publisher of newspapers in the United States after Gannett Co. It publishes 31 daily newspapers in 28 markets.

The attack did not affect the Knight Ridder Digital's Real Cities network of 83 city and regional Web sites that run on different servers than the daily newspaper sites.