The attack that took down the New York Times Web site Tuesday afternoon, along with domains belonging to Twitter and the Huffington Post, was accomplished through the use of compromised credentials belonging to a reseller for the registrar that those companies use to buy their domains. The attack s effects were widespread, making the Times home page unavailable to some visitors for long periods of time Tuesday afternoon and also put control of domains that Twitter uses to host images in the hands of the Syrian Electronic Army. The operation shows how easily and quickly things can go downhill when a key piece of the Internet’s underlying infrastructure is compromised.
Source: https://threatpost.com/registrar-hack-at-root-of-ny-times-and-twitter-attacks/102123/