...is still down...

UPDATED, BUMPED: Officials probe Lieberman website crash...

U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman's campaign Web site remained offline Thursday, and federal and state authorities were investigating why it crashed on the eve of this week's defeat in a high-profile primary.

The site, Joe2006.com, appeared to have suffered from a so-called "denial of service" attack, in which computers overwhelm a site with fake traffic so real visitors can't get through, said Richard M. Smith, an Internet security consultant in Brookline, Mass.

The Lieberman campaign denied speculation among liberal Web pundits that the centrist Democrat's Web site had simply crashed because it used a low-budget Web host unable to handle the volume.

Web hosting can cost anywhere from a few dollars a month for a personal Web site to thousands of dollars for large corporate sites.

The campaign spends about $100 to $150 a month on Web hosting services with MyHostCamp, said Dan Geary, who administers the site for the campaign. Geary said that MyHostCamp, which is owned by a friend of Geary's, gave the site more than enough bandwidth - 200 gigabytes a month - to handle a crush of visitors.

He said an analysis of the server suggested an attack that focused on specific components of the Web site such as internal files and e-mail.

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