Many users this morning have only been able to get an error message when logging on to the New York Times, and for a short time was pointing to a Syrian Electronic Army domain.
HD Moore, chief research officer at security firm Rapid 7, said the domains hit by the SEA as use Melbourne IT as their domain registrar.
"Once access to the registrar is obtained, the SEA can redirect all DNS, email, and web traffic going to these sites to a server of their choosing," he told Mashable.
Many prominent web sites, including AOL.com, Yahoo.com, Google.com, and Microsoft.com, are all registered with MelbourneIT.
News Limited is seeking comment from MelbourneIT.
