The site rendered inactive or inefficient at approximately 1:45 p.m. (PDT) but was back up at 3:10 p.m.
Just prior to and during the DDoS attack, Operation Payback, on its site, said: "IMMA FIRING MAH LAYZOR."
Operation Payback, on its Facebook page, said that it took 2 minutes and 53 seconds "to bring Hustler.com to a screeching halt."
The 4Chan vigilante cell said it would target Hustler.com, because parent company LFP Inc. recently filed suits targeting more than 5,000 alleged users of BitTorrent networks who downloaded content.
LFP President Michael Klein defended his company's legal challenges to XBIZ on Thursday, saying, "Theft of content takes away from the company, performers, studio personnel and make-up artists."
A DDoS, or a distributed denial of service, attack oftentimes involves saturating the targeted server with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable.
Further details are coming.