According to a statement issued and later removed by the company, it came under attack from a source in China on Wednesday morning. After reconfiguring its firewalls "to block bad traffic", the main thrust of the DDoS was repelled with 15 minutes although the DDoS continued to strike target firm throughout the day.

"As the largest domain provider in the UK, and coupled with the increase of these types of attacks across Europe in particular, we know we are a prime target. We are still in the process of resolving this," read a statement from 123-reg CEO, Thomas Vollrath.

"Our network of back-up servers ensured we were able to move our traffic across very quickly," he wrote.

The firm now appears to have removed all references to the attack from its support pages, including the contentious reference to the attack's possible origins in China.

The attack comes only a month after a large DDoS hit another big UK hoster, UK2.net, causing significant disruption.