Cyber attacks debilitate Burmese exile news websites and community forums

September 18, 2008

HURFOM : The websites of three Burmese exile news agencies, as well as at least two online community forums, have been debilitated by severe cyber attacks throughout August and September.

The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which render a site inaccessible by overloading its server with data requests, have targeted the English language news sites of the Irrawaddy and Democratic Voice of Burma, the Burmese language news site the New Era Journal and community forums Mystery Zillion and Planet Myanmar.

According to Mizzima news service, the Irrawaddy began experience problems with its site on the evening of September 16^th, but could not confirm a sustained DDoS attack until the following day. The Democratic Voice of Burma and the New Era Journal also confirmed to Mizzima that DDoS attacks shut down their sites on the 17^th.

“Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the monk-led uprising known as the ‘Saffron Revolution,’” reads a note on the Irrawaddy homepage explaining the technical difficulties, “We have received reports that Internet speeds in Burma have been very slow since yesterday, suggesting that there has been a concerted effort to prevent information from going into or out of the country.”

Last month, the popular Burmese online forums Mystery Zillion and Planet Myanmar also experienced difficulties, which they have confirmed to be caused by DDoS attacks; Mystery Zillion was inoperable for most of August and lost all of the site content stored in its database, while Planet Myanmar went down for two weeks beginning August 9^th.

Neither site is politically oriented, and both prohibit explicit criticisms of the SPDC because they fear government censorship and restriction. “We are not interested in politics,” says one of Mystery Zillion’s founders, “our site is only for IT (information technology) development for young people inside Burma seeking IT knowledge.” Planet Myanmar also strives to be non-political, and its content is largely oriented towards topics like IT, lifestyle, entertainment and relationships.

The community forums do, however, provide information about bypassing the restrictions the regime places on Internet access. This information is vital to people attempting to get news and information to foreign and exile news agencies and human rights organizations, and was used to bring international focus on last fall’s Saffron Protests.

The recent DDoS attacks are not the first time such cyber-warfare has been waged against sites critical of the SPDC regime – the Democratic Voice of Burma and Mizzima News Agency were both victims in July.

Although it is not clear who is launching the attacks or where from, the simultaneous nature of their occurrence, and the fact that the attacks are taking place on the one year anniversary of the Saffron Protests, are leading many to blame the SPDC. If this is the case, the attacks would seem to indicate an increase in the SPDC’s technological savvy, widely reported to have been lacking during its response to the wide scale protests last fall. The regime’s lack of familiarity with technological issues like blogs or the power of internet information transfers has been attributed to the October 2004 ouster of former intelligence chief and Prime Minister Khin Nyunt, who maintained a network of spies and experts adept at controlling dissident’s use of the Internet. One year later, the regime seems to be better able to restrict access.

Written by HURFOM · Filed Under News