Forwarded From: Nelson Murilo <nelson@pangeia.com.br>
[http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/technology/wired/story.htm
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Tuesday May 12 3:14 PM EDT
Russia thwarts hacker attacks of Yeltsin Web chat
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian state communications security service said
it had prevented more than 20 hacking attempts into a computer which
President Boris Yeltsin used during his first Internet chat, Interfax
news agency said.
It quoted a senior official with the Federal Agency for Government
Communication and Information (FAPSI) as saying hackers had tried to
destroy the computer server, apparently referring to the government
computer that provided a Russian transcript of the exchanges between
Yeltsin and a worldwide audience.
Chris Donohue, who ran the half-hour chat session from the United
States on the MSNBC Web site, said there had been no apparent assaults
on the U.S. company's server, which organised the live
English-language question and answer session.
"Our server held up beautifully, no attacks were noticeable to our
team," he said by telephone.
Donohue said over 4,000 people joined the chat itself, but it could be
viewed by more people. The FAPSI official said as many as 22,000
Internet users worldwide visited the chat servers.
The session yielded little in the way of new insights into Moscow
politics.
But a handful of Web surfers who managed to personally ask Yeltsin
their questions learned that the president felt in good shape, had
never puffed a cigarette, owed his bouffant hairstyle to the women in
his life not to Irish ancestry and that Russia was not ready for a
woman president.
FAPSI has said in the past that its lines are virtually impregnable to
hacking due to high-tech anti-bugging devices and top-secret data
encryption.
Teenage hackers from a number of countries including Russia are held
responsible for a recent assault on the U.S. Pentagon computer systems
and other military computer networks.
Copyright © 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
-o-
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Received on Fri May 15 10:02:17 1998