Time Warner Cable wants you to know that if you’re one of their customers — the slow speeds you’ve been experiencing are the result of a denial of service attack by nefarious hacker-types.

In an email to Consumerist, Jeff Simmermon, Director of Digital Communications for TWC, wrote that the ISP has been experiencing “some pretty extensive and frustrating internet service problems with our customers out in Southern California and in our National divisions. As it turns out, our DNS servers have been hit pretty hard by DDoS attacks.”

A full statement is posted here. Here’s an excerpt:

These attacks are not uncommon, especially for a network as large as ours. However, this particular series of attacks has been larger and more difficult to contain than similar attacks in the past. We suspect that the attackers are using “zombie computers,” or hijacking unsuspecting subscribers’ machines to perpetuate the attack without its owner’s knowledge.

As of 6PM EST on February 24th, we have amplified and expanded early detection and response to this sort of problem.

Customers who want to prevent their computers from being used in this sort of attack should make sure that their anti-virus and firewall software are up to date.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please know that we are currently working with the help of law enforcement to bring these attackers to justice.

If you need some anti-virus software, Lifehacker has some recommendations.

No word on whether TWC will offer compensation to those customers who were affected by the attack.

[Official Statement From Time Warner Cable re: Southern California DNS Outages ]

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