[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

RE: The Right to Freedom of Expression (fwd)



Al-Jazeera's site is periodically down due to either (a) hackers according
to the site's host or (b) demand to access the site being 4 times greater
than expected according the assistant to the managing editor of the
English-language version of Al-Jazeera.  See story by the Associated Press
below.  Neither source accuses the U.S. government of blocking the site.


Al-Jazeera Web Site Enduring Hack Attack 
Wed Mar 26, 5:20 AM ET  
By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer 

Hackers attacked the Web site of Arab satellite television network
Al-Jazeera on Tuesday, rendering it intermittently unavailable, the site's
host said. 

The newly launched English-language page, which went live Monday and posted
images of the corpses of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq (news - web sites),
was hardest hit in a bombardment of data packets known as a
denial-of-service (news - web sites) attack. 


Ayman Arrashid, Internet system administrator at the Horizons Media and
Information Services, the site's Web host, said the attack began Tuesday
morning local time. 


Nabil Hegazi, assistant to the managing editor of the English Web site,
denied that an attack was the reason the site was unavailable. He said it
was difficult to access because traffic was almost four times more than
expected. 


The Web host is based in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. The servers that
host the Al-Jazeera site are in France and the United States. Arrashid said
he could not determine the attack's origin, but only the U.S. servers were
affected, leading him to suspect that the attackers were in the United
States. 


He said technicians were working to thwart the attack, but could not
estimate when the site would be fully available again. 


In denial-of-service attacks, hackers normally send a deluge of false
requests to Web servers, overloading them and making them unavailable to
surfers. 


Al-Jazeera, also based in Qatar, is an unusually independent and powerful
voice in the Arab world whose broadcasts of U.S. prisoners and war dead has
angered many Americans. 


Earlier, Al-Jazeera said two reporters had their credentials revoked by the
New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites) because of the network's coverage
of the war. The exchange said the decision was prompted by space
constraints. 


Al-Jazeera's English site was unavailable Tuesday from four out of five
locations in the United States, said Roopak Patel, a senior analyst at
Keynote Systems Inc., a San Mateo, Calif., company that tracks Web
performance. 


He said the Arabic site had starting Sunday experienced periods of very poor
availability - which may have been caused by hackers, Patel said. 


___ 


-- 
To unsubscribe, e-mail: debate-unsubscribe@lists.fitug.de
For additional commands, e-mail: debate-help@lists.fitug.de