Planned Parenthood websites have gone down and are, according to the main page, undergoing maintenance.

In a statement emailed to SCMagazine.com on Thursday, Dawn Laguens, executive VP of Planned Parenthood, said that the Planned Parenthood websites were the target of a DDoS attack.

“Today, the Planned Parenthood websites experienced a wide scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a hacker tactic to overwhelm websites with massive amounts of traffic to block any legitimate traffic from getting in,” Laguens said.

The websites were back online shortly after the attack, but are scheduled to remain down throughout Thursday for security purposes, Laguens said, adding that during this time visitors are being redirected to the organization’s Facebook pages.

Following reports that politically motivated attackers released website databases, Planned Parenthood announced on Monday that it is investigating possible unauthorized access to its systems.

Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/planned-parenthood-websites-downed-in-ddos-attack/article/429563/