http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Emerging_Threats/Briefing/2008/01/07/chinese_dissident_site_hacked_again/3849/
By Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
Jan. 7, 2008
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- A U.S.-based Web site that hosts Chinese
dissidents' blogs is being hacked again, days after an attack took it
offline and nearly destroyed its archives.
The Web site, Boxun.com, which hosts some 2000 blogs, was the target of
a "very strong" distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attack last
week, its editor, Watson Meng, told United Press International.
He added that hackers probing the Web sites of several U.S. government
agencies had "spoofed" or forged their Internet addresses to make it
seem as if the probes came from his site.
"Our service provider received complaints from a number of government
agencies," he said.
He said last week's attack, which lasted several hours, bombarded the
Boxun servers with fake data requests at an average of 70 MB per second.
"It really slowed us down," he said.
Boxun crashed altogether Dec. 24 after a massive DDOS strike and was
only just up and running again when it was attacked again last week.
"The last couple of months we have been receiving these attacks every
week or so," Meng said, adding that the Web site had been forced to find
a new server host that was better able to handle the constant stream of
attacks.
The non-profit Reporters Without Borders says Boxun is one of a number
of Web sites carrying uncensored news and information about China that
had been recently attacked "probably by hackers based in China,"
according to a statement. It said journalists and dissidents who write
for Boxun from China were "particularly targeted" by authorities there.
Other observers have said recently that China is likely to embark on a
coordinated effort to shut up and shut down critics of the Communist
regime there in advance of the Summer Olympics.
Received on Wed Jan 9 02:15:04 2008