Has the mass hacker attack which began last Sunday claimed a high-profile victim in China?
The official China news organ the People’s Daily reported that Web site blogchina.com seemed to have been knocked out by a flooding denial of service (DOS) attack. The site is now back online. Fang Xingdong, founder and owner of the Web site, was quoted as saying that the attack had been provoked by his outspoken attacks on online porn. The news agency said that “blogchina.com recently launched a campaign against online porn services, with erotic, lucrative short messages especially under fire.” These online porn purveyors may have brought down Fang’s site in retaliation, alleges the report. It also hinted that there was a political edge to the hacker attack, as Fang’s past diatribes have also been aimed at “leading Chinese search engines, including some listed on the US-based technology-firms Nasdaq stock market.” This is believed to be a reference to the China portals of Yahoo and MSN. Fang is described in the report as “an Internet critic known in China for his encyclopaedic knowled
