Internet services for Melita customers are returning to normal after they slowed down on Wednesday afternoon following a cyber attack by criminals aiming to extort money.

Many customers took to social media on Wednesday to report that they were having internet trouble.

In a statement, the company said that it was suffering from what’s called a DDOS attack by “cybercriminals aiming to extort money.”

A DDOS attack, or distributed denial-of-service attack is a commonly-used method by cybercriminals to overwhelm a website with too much traffic, forcing it to crash.

Melita said none of its systems had been breached as a result of the attack and that the attack has been reported to the police.

In a later statement, the company said it had largely mitigated the DDOS attack. As a result, customer services are now returning to normal despite the fact that the attack is still ongoing.

“Attacks of this nature are attempted often, with today’s incident being one of the most sophisticated yet. This is a global phenomenon of criminals seeking to extract money which affects operators around the world,” it said.

“Thanks to Melita's continuous, significant investment in cybersecurity, these attacks are typically dealt with in the background without any impact to our customers. While today’s large-scale attack did have an impact on customers, the systems in place have nevertheless been able to largely mitigate it within a few short hours, and kept customer data safe,” the company said.