Al-Jazeera's Web Site
Is Attacked by Hackers
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Hackers attacked the Web site of Arab satellite television network Al-Jazeera Tuesday, rendering it intermittently unavailable, the site's host said.
The newly launched English-language page (english.aljazeera.net), which went live Monday, was hardest hit in a bombardment of data packets known as a denial-of-service attack. Ayman Arrashid, Internet system administrator at the Horizons Media & Information Services, the site's Web host, said the attack began Tuesday morning local time.
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 U.S. Only the U.S. servers were under attack, said Mr. Arrashid, so the attackers were likely in the U.S. He said technicians were working to thwart the attack, but couldn't estimate when the site would be fully available again.
Al-Jazeera, also based in Qatar, is an unusually powerful voice in the Arab world whose broadcasts of U.S. prisoners and war dead has angered many in the U.S. The English site proved equally provocative, offering graphic photos of dead U.S. soldiers, pointed headlines and opinionated articles.
Representatives of the broadcaster couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
In denial-of-service attacks, hackers normally send a deluge of false requests to Web servers, overloading them and making them unavailable to surfers.
Updated March 25, 2003 1:36 p.m
Is Attacked by Hackers
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Hackers attacked the Web site of Arab satellite television network Al-Jazeera Tuesday, rendering it intermittently unavailable, the site's host said.
The newly launched English-language page (english.aljazeera.net), which went live Monday, was hardest hit in a bombardment of data packets known as a denial-of-service attack. Ayman Arrashid, Internet system administrator at the Horizons Media & Information Services, the site's Web host, said the attack began Tuesday morning local time.
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 U.S. Only the U.S. servers were under attack, said Mr. Arrashid, so the attackers were likely in the U.S. He said technicians were working to thwart the attack, but couldn't estimate when the site would be fully available again.
Al-Jazeera, also based in Qatar, is an unusually powerful voice in the Arab world whose broadcasts of U.S. prisoners and war dead has angered many in the U.S. The English site proved equally provocative, offering graphic photos of dead U.S. soldiers, pointed headlines and opinionated articles.
Representatives of the broadcaster couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
In denial-of-service attacks, hackers normally send a deluge of false requests to Web servers, overloading them and making them unavailable to surfers.
Updated March 25, 2003 1:36 p.m
