Hong Kong ( CNN ) -- Millions of Chinese netizens were prevented from accessing huge swathes of the Internet Tuesday , with many rerouted to a website owned by a U.S. company with ties to a group outlawed in China . The China Internet Network Information Center ( CNNIC ) , a state-run department , blamed a `` malfunction in root servers '' that blocked access to top-level domain names in China such as .com and .net , according to a post on its Sina Weibo account , the Twitter-like micro-blogging service . Security analysts quoted by the official Xinhua news agency said this could have been the result of a cyber attack by hackers -- though this has not been proved . Dynamic Internet Technology ( DIT ) confirmed it owns the web address users were redirected to but denied any involvement . It said the company 's IP address is already blocked in China so users would have been met by a blank web page . DIT President Bill Xia told CNN Wednesday that the Internet outage was likely caused by China 's own web censorship system , more widely known by its infamous `` Great Firewall '' moniker , which controls access to content on the Internet inside China deemed unsuitable . China 'employs 2 million to police internet ' `` Their DNS hijacking system is used to redirect visits to certain websites to the wrong IP address , '' he said . `` But this time it was likely a temporary misconfiguration that affected all domain names . '' According to its website , the U.S.-based company provides a range of services including anti-censorship solutions and has worked `` to provide web access to forbidden sites for Internet users in China , '' with the Epoch Times , a newspaper run by the Falun Gong , listed among its clients . The Falun Gong is a spiritual movement that has been banned in China since 1999 , accused of `` spreading fallacies , hoodwinking people , inciting and creating disturbances and jeopardizing social stability . ''
Access to domain names such as .com blocked Tuesday afternoon in China . State media quoted security experts saying this could have been cyber attack . Internet users rerouted to U.S.-owned website with links to banned group in China . Dynamic Internet Technology said problem likely caused by China 's own censors .