Amazon hit by cyber attack

The technology section of the BBC News reports that the European sites of Amazon online retailer were down for about half an hour on Sunday, perhaps as part of on-going activism by pro-Wikileak-ists.

British, French, German, Austrian, and Italian Amazon websites -- all of which are hosted from Dublin -- went down during a peak pre-Christmas shopping splurge.

Amazon has made no comment, apart from observing that all servers were up and running after a short delay.

There were no clear indications that the group of cyber activists, known as "Anonymous," was responsible for the failure of services, and the group has not admitted making the attack.  It did, however, publicize plans to mount a denial-of-service (DDos) attack on Amazon, just a few days ago.