CNN cyberattack called off

April 20, 2008 —

A planned cyberattack against CNN's Web site fizzled out Saturday as the group
backing the event called it off.

"Our original plan for 19 April has been canceled because too many people
are aware of it and the situation is chaotic," wrote a group called "Revenge
of the Flame," according to a translation
posted on the Dark Visitor Blog. "At an unspecified date in the near
future, we will launch the attack."

Pro-China hackers had called for the attack in protest of the news network's
coverage of Tibet, which they believe has been overly critical of China. Participants
had been instructed to flood CNN's Web site with Internet traffic in hopes of
knocking it offline, something known as a distributed denial of service (DDOS)
attack.

Some had begun hitting the site ahead of the April 19 attack date.

On Friday CNN
reported that it had been attacked Thursday causing the site "to be
slow or unavailable to some users in limited areas of Asia." The net effect
of the attack was "imperceptible," CNN said.

Network monitoring company Arbor Networks observed that www3.cnn.com was hit
with a minor 14-MB-per-second attack that lasted about 21 minutes, according
to Danny McPherson, the company's chief research officer.

IDG News Service