Fergie's Tech Blog

Cyber Attacks Cripple Opposition Myanmar Media

An AP newswire article by Doug Mellgren, via The Boston Globe, reports that:

The Internet sites of three Myanmar opposition media groups in exile suffered widespread cyber attacks on Thursday, the anniversary of last year's failed uprising against the Southeast Asia country's military dictatorship.

"We think it has something to do with the Saffron Revolution," the anti-government protests by thousands of Buddhist monks in Myanmar on Sept. 18, 2007, said Aye Chan Naing. The chief editor of the Oslo-based radio and TV network Democratic Voice of Burma told The Associated Press that computers began flooding the station's servers with so many requests for information on Wednesday that the systems could not cope.

Similar attacks on Thursday also periodically shut down the servers of the Irrawaddy Magazine and the New Era Journal, Myanmar opposition media groups based in Thailand, he said. At its Web address, Irrawaddy confirmed that its service was not available due to a cyber attack.

posted by Fergie @ 9/18/2008 02:02:00 PM