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Hackers shut down Ancestry.com genealogy site

By WTOP Staff

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Ancestry.com says the popular genealogy site was offline much of Tuesday after being hacked.

Officials at the Provo, Utah-based company say hackers on Monday afternoon fooled the site into thinking there was an inordinate amount of traffic flooding it, which crashed its server.

Company chief technology officer Scott Sorensen apologized in a statement to family history researchers for the inconvenience and said the situation was just as frustrating to the company.

KSL reports (http://bit.ly/1lD0ffX) Sorensen stressed no data was compromised or mined by hackers, and the company is working to prevent similar attacks in the future.

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Information from: KSL-TV, http://www.ksl.com/

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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By WTOP Staff
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