Information Security News: Akamai declines to assist Al-Jazeera site

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/840616p-5909745c.html

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer
 
(April 4, 2003 4:47 p.m. EST) - The Web site of Arab satellite news 
channel Al-Jazeera was refused assistance this week when it sought 
help from Akamai Technologies Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., in dealing 
with hacking attacks and massive interest from Web users. 

"We think it's political pressure," said Nabil Hegazi, deputy managing 
editor of Al-Jazeera's English-language Web site. 

Akamai rents out a network of 12,600 servers that help customer Web 
sites deal with unexpected traffic, hacker attacks and Internet 
bottlenecks. 

In a prepared statement, Akamai said it "worked briefly this week with 
Al Jazeera to understand the issues they are having distributing their 
websites," but decided not to continue the relationship. 

Akamai would not comment Friday on why it broke off the collaboration. 

Al-Jazeera drew intense interest and criticism after it carried Iraqi 
TV footage of dead and captive U.S. soldiers. U.S. television networks 
had decided not to air footage of the corpses. Al-Jazeera later 
honored a U.S. request to stop until families could be notified. 

Its English-language Web site was brought down by Internet attacks 
soon after it debuted last week, and the Arabic page was unavailable 
for long periods as well. Hackers calling themselves the "Freedom 
Cyber Force Militia" later diverted visitors seeking the English site 
to a page with a U.S. flag. 

Al-Jazeera said this week that steps were being taken to protect its 
servers against hackers. The English-language page was back online by 
Thursday evening U.S. time. 

Web portal Lycos reported that Al-Jazeera's site was the most 
sought-after on the Internet last week. 

Al-Jazeera is based in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. It has 
received funding by Qatar's government but is an unusually independent 
voice in the Arab world. 

Its reporters were banned from the floor of the New York Stock 
Exchange last week, but the exchange has indicated that it might be 
willing to reconsider its decision. 




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