Tuesday October 30 7:21 PM ET NY Times Computers Shut Down by Apparent Attack NEW YORK (Reuters) - Internet connections at the New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT - news) were interrupted for several hours on Tuesday afternoon after the paper's computers were flooded with bogus information in an apparent attack. ``We don't know that it was malicious, but there seems to be no innocent explanation,'' wrote network administrator Terry Schwadron in an e-mail to newsroom employees. The Times computers ``started receiving a huge amount of electronic transmission that flooded the machinery that protects the paper from hacker attacks,'' according to Schwadron's e-mail, in what he called ``denial of service activity.'' In a denial of service attack, thousands of fake messages are sent to server computers, tying up the recipient's network. The main White House Web site (http://www.whitehouse.gov) was hit with a similar attack in May. The New York Times Web site (http://www.nytimes.com) was online as of Tuesday evening. A spokeswoman for the company, reading a statement, said: ''Some New York Times employees are experiencing difficulty accessing the Internet through their computers. Our technical staff is trying to determine the reason for this. At this time, we do not know the cause.'' The spokeswoman did confirm the contents of Schwadron's e-mail. The New York Times has gone through two anthrax scares since Oct. 12, but tests came up negative for the bacteria. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20011030/wr/media_newyorktimes_computers_d...