Jul 25, 2008 (DVB), The website run by the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma radio and TV station has been hit by a persistent and severe Distributed Denial of Service attack rendering the site mostly inaccessible since 20 July 2008.
DVB was informed by the hosting service provider Rackspace on 20 July that its website had been the target of a DDoS attack but that the volume of data was not large enough to knock down the site. However, with the next couple of hours, the attacker had managed to block the site from the Internet.
According to the hosting company, the amount of data flooding onto the DVB web site was well over one gigabyte per second, many times more than the site can handle.
A DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to disable a website, including by overwhelming the site with information requests so that it cannot respond to regular traffic.
"The attacker is obviously trying to shut down DVB‘s website from the internet as the attack has been getting more severe and persistent over the last four days. And we are still under attack," said Khin Maung Win, deputy executive director of DVB.
DVB is an independent multi-media organisation focusing on Burma. It broadcasts two hours of short-wave radio and one hour of TV into Burma on a daily basis.
DVB‘s website is one the main information sources for those who are interested in news about Burma and is accessed by at least 10,000 visitors per day.
"Technically, it is of course difficult to say who is behind the attack. But we can easily say that Burmese government is behind this attack," said Khin Maung Win.
"Apart from them, who else would like to see our Internet site shut down and who else would want to spend a lot of money initiating this kind of attack?"
DVB was a major source of information and TV footage for international media organisations during the Buddhist monk-led demonstrations in September last year and the recent Cyclone Nargis disaster.
"This is another obvious example of the Burmese military regime suppressing media freedom," Khin Maung Win said.
For more information, please contact:
Khin Maung Win, Deputy Executive Director/Deputy Chief Editor
Email: [email protected]
Mobile phone: +4790800263
