News Limited Site Targeted in DDoS Attacks

2010-04-14

Bob Hinch, Australian IT Security Manager at News Limited, revealed at a media briefing held by security company Websense in Sydney, that News Limited's Australian site, amongst other News Limited sites globally, has been hit by numerous distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks, which he says are originating mostly from the Chinese Government, often come with emailed extortion notices demanding the retraction of articles which Hinch says he has reported to the police.

Hinch would not reveal which articles caused the political attacks but says that the attacks occurred when something written by one of the News Limited's journalists wasn't in favor of the attackers view to which the attacks continued to grow more and more aggressive with some even including death threats to the News Limited journalists.

While Hitch reported the attacks to the police, he was often referred to the Australian High Tech Crime Centre and said that part of the problem with these attacks is that there is not a lot of case law to litigate online attacks, stating "It's very difficult to get the police to pay attention to some of these issues and the threats we get."