http://www.trib.com/AP/wire_detail.php?wire_num=37813 March 28, 2003 SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The Salt Lake City-based Internet service provider Networld Connections became the unwitting tool of hackers attacking Arab television network Al-Jazeera, then itself then struck by a retaliatory attack, possibly from anti-war hackers. The original hackers, impersonating an Al-Jazeera employee, tricked the Web addressing company Network Solutions into making technical changes that effectively turned over temporary control of the network's Arabic and English Web sites. Visitors to those sites were diverted to pornography and to a page with a U.S. flag and the message, ''Let Freedom Ring.'' That page was posted on Networld Connections computers from 8 a.m. Thursday until 10:30 a.m., when it was removed. ''We have no idea who the hacker is, but now there is a 'denial-of-service' attack going on against us because of what happened, something we had no control over,'' Ken Bowman, Networld's president and chief executive, said late Thursday. ''We are using most of our bandwidth, but we are blocking most of it - they haven't taken us down.'' Denial-of-service attacks flood a targeted service with data, such as self-reproducing e-mails or incomplete computer-processing commands. The intention is to overwhelm the target's resources, either crashing the site or at least making it inaccessible to others. Bowman said the attacks were from all over the world, but seemed concentrated most from nations such as Russia, China and France that have among the most vocal opponents of the U.S.-British coalition's attack. Al-Jazeera's Web sites have been suffering disruptions for days, ever since showing pictures of dead and captive U.S. soldiers in Iraq. - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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