On a mirror site set up by "Irrawaddy", the magazine said the cyber attack coincides with the third anniversary of the "Saffron Revolution", the monk-led protest in Burma.
(SEAPA/IFEX) – The Thailand-based “Irrawaddy” magazine, which is a leading critic of the Burmese junta, reported that its website has been under attack since midnight on 27 September 2010.
The magazine’s general manager, Win Thu, told SEAPA that the “Irrawaddy” English and Burmese websites at http://www.irrawaddy.org and http://www.irrawaddy.org/bur have been under “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attack since 12:30 a.m. on 27 September. Its mirror site at http://www.irrawaddymedia.com has also been under attack.
The magazine put up another mirror site ( http://www.theirrawaddy.blogspot.com ) where it posted a note saying that the “attacks coincide with the third anniversary of the ‘Saffron Revolution’, the monk-led protest in Burma. The first major attack was in September 2008, on the (revolution’s) first anniversary.”
“According to an e-mail sent by the website host in the US to the ‘Irrawaddy’ webmaster team, the website (suffered) a high volume attack which overloaded its capacity to provide service,” “Irrawaddy” further wrote on its new mirror site.
Win Thu gave assurances on the mirror site that the attack would be short term, “but it has disrupted the daily news production and access by our readers.”
He said the “Irrawaddy” web team is now trying to recover the websites. In 2008, it took three days to recover the website, according to technicians.
