Pakistan creates denial of service attack - on Pakistan

Demiurge · Feb 25, 2008

http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=548

The telecom company that carries most of Pakistan’s traffic, PCCW, has found it necessary to shut Pakistan off from the Internet while they filter out the malicious routes that a Pakistani ISP, PieNet, announced earlier today. Evidently PieNet took this step to enforce a decree from the Pakistani government that ISP’s must block access to YouTube because it was a source of blasphemous content.

I cannot let the irony pass with out commenting. A religious state, Pakistan, identifies a content provider, YouTube, as the source of blasphemous, seditious content and orders, King Canute style, that the Internet tides be stopped. A zealous ISP ignorantly decides the best way to comply with the decree is to re-route all of YouTube’s IP addresses to whatever site they thought was more appropriate. The first repercussion was that YouTube disappeared from the Internet for almost an hour. I suspect the second repercussion was that Pakistan’s Internet access crawled to a halt as all of a sudden they were handling IP requests for one of the busiest sites in the world. As of this writing YouTube has announced more granular routes so that at least in the US they supercede the routes announced by PieNet. The rest of the world is still struggling. So, while working on a fix that will filter out the spurious route announcements, PCCW has found it necessary to shut down Pakistan’s Internet access. The leadership of Pakistan just created a massive Denial of Service on their own country.

I could say: “be careful what you wish for” to those elements that object to free and open access to information and expression of ideas. But to put it in terms they might understand better: Do not anger the Internet gods or you will suffer their wrath!

Update: This blog points out that the “blasphemous content” claim may be a red herring. There may be more political motivations behind it.
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Dan Leach · Feb 25, 2008

lol
Been reading about it this morning.
Only the truly stupid would ever try and restrict parts of the internet, and its great to see those who try fuck it up so badly

Demiurge · Feb 25, 2008

Yeah, and I'd like to see the lawsuit Youtube is going to hit PieNet with coming up. Blocking off Youtube from Pakistan is up to their legislature. Fucking with Youtube entirely has got to be worth millions of dollars.

frontline · Feb 25, 2008

Absolutely brilliant Pakistan.

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Pakistan creates denial of service attack - on Pakistan

Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

Dan Leach Climbing Staff Member Moderator

Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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Pakistan creates denial of service attack - on Pakistan

Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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