The popular Drudge Report website was hit last night in an apparent Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) for the second time in a week, knocking it temporarily off the internet.

Readers were unable to log onto the site last night amid fears it had been targeted by cyber criminals.

On December 30, the news aggregation website went down for 90 minutes.

Twitter users last night reported that Matt Drudge's Drudge Report was knocked offline

It is the second time in a week that the popular site has been subjected to a DDoS attack

Writing last Thursday, Matt Drudge revealed on his Twitter account that the website had been targeted with the biggest DDoS it had ever experienced in its 21 year history, leaving users unable to access content.

He also stated that the 'routing and timing' of the attack was 'VERY suspicious,' which then led him to tweet: 'Is the US government attacking DRUDGE REPORT?'

Drudge then followed up with another tweet shortly after, writing: 'Attacking coming from "thousands" of sources. Of course none of them traceable to Fort Meade...'

The suggestion that the Obama administration might have launched a targeted attack against the website polarized Twitter users, with fans of Drudge Report supporting its founder's suspicions and detractors responding with disbelief and in some cases outrage at the allegation.

WHAT IS A DDOS ATTACK? DDoS attacks are a primitive form of hacking using botnets - networks of computers that hackers bring under their control. They do this by getting users to inadvertently download software, typically by following a link in an email or agreeing to download a corrupted file. These botnets are then used to bombard the servers with simple requests for information carried out simultaneously, causing them to become overwhelmed and shut down. Advertisement

According to Gateway Pundit, last night was the second time the Drudge Report had been attacked in a week.

One user claimed: 'Drudge knows how to poke da bear. Go Matt!!!! Keep pokin' dat darned bear!!!'

Another suggested Matt Drudge needed some hackers of his own to target those responsible for the attack.

Experts have warned that the entire internet could be taken offline for 24 hours by a coordinated attack.

According to US technology security vendor LogRhythm, a cyber-attack of this scale this year isn't only possible, but extremely likely.

James Carder, VP of LogRhytms said: 'In 2017, we're going to see it hit big sometime, somewhere.

'If the internet goes down, financial markets will tank,' Carder added.

With a global DDoS attack last year having seen sites including Twitter, Reddit, Paypal, Netflix and Spotify knocked off the internet for hours at a time, Carder believes the signs are there an attack that would take down the entire internet.