THE BBC says its main news website and other sites were knocked offline due to an attack.br A news story posted on the website said it had been due to a "distributed denial of service" attack in which a website is swamped with more traffic than it can handle.br This is a relatively common way to target a website and temporarily make it inaccessible.br The reported attack hit a wide range of BBC websites and also affected the iPlayer and iPlayer Radio services.br The corporation's televised news service and live radio services remained on the air.