Amazon Servers Down 3 Hours – Updated

SATURDAY AM UPDATE: Yesterday’s outage lasted about two hours with problems persisting for an additional 90 minutes.  No reason for the outage has been provided by America’s largest online retailer thus far. See details and a time line below:

I’ve been getting this error message since about 1:30 PM EST on Amazon.com.

Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

The last time the site went down, it took parts of Twitter and other sites who share hosting.t.

UPDATE: According to JP Sykes, Amazon has been hacked. (Details after the jump.) 

UPDATE : 2:45 PM EST – The site is
still down. I was able to get on the front page several times briefly
when I tried to go anywhere on the site, I kept getting kicked off…
UPDATE: 3:15 PM EST – Shares were down 3.9% and still no official comment. I’m now getting this message. There’s a link, but I can’t move around the site: 

We’re sorry!

An
error occurred when we tried to process your request. Rest assured,
we’re already working on the problem and expect to resolve it shortly.

If you were trying to make a purchase, please check Your Account to confirm that the order was placed.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: 4:20
EST Site appears buggy but back up.  I was able to complete a
transaction.  Outage lasted about 3 hours…an eternity in the internet
age.

Some details on the hack after the jump…

RE: THE HACK.  (One Hypebot reader says this is NOT proof of a hack.)

FROM JP SYKES:

"It’s not down, it’s been royally hacked.

terminal:~ me$ whois amazon.com

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

AMAZON.COM.ZZZZZ.GET.LAID.AT.WWW.SWINGINGCOMMUNITY.COM
AMAZON.COM.MORE.INFO.AT.WWW.BEYONDWHOIS.COM
AMAZON.COM.IS.N0T.AS.1337.AS.WWW.GULLI.COM
AMAZON.COM
…

Amazing"