UPDATED: 2 p.m. GMT, with attack details
BRISTOL, England -- Early risers on New Year's Eve hoping to catch up on the news, listen to the radio or get a head start to an iPlayer binge were cruelly met with dreaded "500 error" messages when they tried to access anything on the BBC website.
A BBC News story said that a a "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) web attack technique had taken down its website.
The corporation hasn't confirmed or denied that such an attack happened, but said around midday the site was operating normally and apologised for the inconvenience.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The site was down from around 7:00 a.m GMT to 10:30 a.m. GMT. In that time, everyone woke up -- and panicked.
THE BEEB IS DOWN! PANIC! #BBCDown pic.twitter.com/KWzH5ckKlE— DD (@bl0ke) December 31, 2015
OMFG Its the Y2K-16 bug, several hours early proving the BBC Internet is pre-recorded from the future & the world ends at midnight. #bbcdown— paul mccarthy-brain (@penguinbasher) December 31, 2015
@keeforelli @DaiTheBay #bbcdown radio 4 is on apocalypse not happened or is delayed...not being mentioned though #20thcentury thinking— Rascal (@Russ12189) December 31, 2015
Meanwhile in the BBC IT department. #bbcdown pic.twitter.com/WlXDdGLoqX— Jeremey Corbyn (@jeremeycorbyn) December 31, 2015
You know it's serious when Stephen Fry gets involved.
This is a long time for an outage @BBC: the conspiracy theorists will be out soon. Not a good time for coulrophobes pic.twitter.com/MJ5lCYHbAV— Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) December 31, 2015
And he taught us a new word: Coulrophobes are people who fear clowns.
Others had more Cold War-style concerns.
Didn't I once hear that BBC Radio4 being silent was a signal to nuclear subs we were at war and they should attack? #bbcdown— Michelle Birkby (@michelleeb) December 31, 2015
How long does the BBC website have to be down before we start firing nuclear warheads at Moscow? #BBCdown— David Glenwright (@OldManGlenners) December 31, 2015
Much talk was of the freaky clown on the error page.
what immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry #BBCdown pic.twitter.com/EM1Hl9YOFP— Esther Webber (@estwebber) December 31, 2015
Others didn't mind too much.
So the BBC websites are all down. Never fear, they will just go to the back up system! #BBC #BBCwebsite #BBCdown pic.twitter.com/7HkJIeBysP— Liam Calland (@yorkshireguy) December 31, 2015
Dear BBC, can you not just show a repeat of last year's web site? #bbc #bbcdown— David Potts (@davidpotts) December 31, 2015