Chernobyl coverage blows up in Radio Free Europe's face

Websites run by Radio Free Europe have been under a fierce cyber attack that coincided with coverage over the weekend of a rally organized by opposition to the Belarusian opposition. The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack initially targeted only the RFE's Belarus service, which starting on Saturday was inundated with …

[Peter]

Don't want to whine, but...

"a rally organized by opposition to the Belarusian opposition."

Shouldn't that be "opposition to the Belarusian government"?

[fran]

Self defeating

I never heard about any Belarus protests, until the DDOS attack was reported, which only served to give more publicity to those protests

[Morten Ranulf Clausen]

LOL

Anyone dumb enough to download and run DDOS tools for "hacktivism" deserve what they get (rootkits, trojans, adware, etc....). This is a problem that's going to solve itself with time.

[Elmer Phud]

cows coming home?

It was outfits like RFE that helped detabilise the old USSR and promote heavy-duty capitalism as the great way forward. We have to thank them for promoting the 'freedom' to make huge amounts of money while ensuring the general populace remain as peasants and uphold ( and strengthen ) the feudal system that the Czars were so fond of.

With RFE's help we have ended up with fuckwits like Putin who had their blessings as he just renamed the KGB and put Armani suits on the thugs.

They wanted it -- they got it. The same ideology that heavily strengthened the Mafia during WW2 has merely produced the modern Mafia of Russia.

RFE - a CIA subsidiary.

[Big Al]

Propaganda from adversity

Typical of RFE/RL to instantly use their problems for propaganda purposes and blame the Belarussian government with no evidence (this IS, after all, an outfit set up with US taxpayers' money to help topple regimes that the US government doesn't like).

The degree to which regard for the US administration has shrunk over the years since 9/11 has certainly produced people here in Central Europe who would gladly take a pot shot at such an American 'icon'.... but I guess RFE/RL won't want to admit that.

[Luther Blissett]

Which hyperreal color is this one?

Not that it matters, in reality they are black and white and red all over. The real revolution will not be televised.

[Andrew Wigglesworth]

Re: cows coming home?

Spot on Elmer Phud, well said!

[placitas]

Get real!

Hey, ELmer Phud, Communism in over 70 years never worked out for those Russian peasants. Capitalism in the context of a civil society in Russia never got a chance, who's fault is that?

Oh, and, RFE was the least of the old USSR's problems. Get real.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Placitas

"Capitalism in the context of a civil society in Russia never got a chance, who's fault is that?"

What? the USSR was infested with more rampant, more unregulated capitalism than the West ever was - we used to call it the black market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be naive

"Anyone dumb enough to download and run DDOS tools for "hacktivism" deserve what they get (rootkits, trojans, adware, etc....). This is a problem that's going to solve itself with time."

Not if the DDOS tools and network are designed by experts inside, as may be the case with these attacks, that far from being the work of loose quasi-spontaneous networks are with all likehood the work of very well equipped secret services.

It's naive to believe that such "nationalist" (fascist) groups are on their own. They are almost always penetrated and even directed from the state and/or very powerful entities such as corporative lobbies.

Attacks such as these are discrete forms of media warfare, or at least experiments into e-warfare. By the moment they are limited but I suspect in the future they may target and succeed in causing much wider Internet disruption, with unknown consequences.