New York Times website hacked

The New York Times website has gone offline for the second time this month after what the company described as a "malicious external attack".

On its Facebook page, the NY Times said it was working to fix the outage, which appears to have started at 7pm on Tuesday.

A technical problem knocked NYTimes.com offline on 14 August.

Analysts said evidence showed a group supporting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was behind Tuesday's attack.

The website was partially back online three hours later, although some users still reported difficulties. During the outage the New York Times published new articles on its Facebook page.

Mark Frons, the company's chief information officer, warned New York Times employees the attack was perpetrated by the Syrian Electronic Army, which backs Mr Assad, "or someone trying very hard to be them".

As it did after the first New York Times outage, competitor Wall Street Journal took down its pay wall and offered its content free to all visitors.

In January, the New York Times said hackers had accessed its website and stolen the passwords of 53 employees after it published a report on the wealth of China Premier Wen Jiabao's family.