Internet & Democracy Blog

As we near the one year anniversary of Burma’s Saffron Revolution and the total shut down of the Internet in that country, a number of dissident Web sites have come under Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks since September 17. The sites include a number of those that have provided critical news and information on events inside Burma that are run by exiled dissidents, including Irrawaddy, Democratic Voice of Burma, and New Era Journal. Most have set up mirror sites to get around the attacks.

It would seem odd that anyone besides Burma’s military government would want to carry out such an attack, and many dissident groups suspect as much. As the mirror site for Irrawaddy claims:

Many in the Burmese community—both inside and outside Burma—believe that the military authorities are behind the cyber attack. Our Web hosting companies have been assisting us day and night tracing IP addresses to identify the cyber criminals.

However, as we’ve seen from similar attacks last month on official Georgian Web sites, we may never be able to prove who was behind the attacks.

An I&D case study which investigates the Internet’s impact on the Saffron revolution will be released in the coming weeks. Look for it here on the I&D blog, as well as the Berkman Web site.

The Burmese Web Sites Attacked on Eve of Saffron Revolution by Internet & Democracy Blog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.