Not hackers, just incompetent
Pakistan has denied being responsible for blocking global access to YouTube.
Analysis by net monitoring firm Renesys shows that the problems getting through to YouTube began as after Pakistan Telecom started to implement a block on the site on the orders of the country’s government. In short, Pakistan Telecom hijacked some of the net addresses assigned to YouTube and redirected them. These redirected addresses propagated beyond Pakistan’s borders and effectively brought down the site for two hours.
A spokesman for Pakistan Telecommunication has now tried to blame some unspecified “malfunction” for the outage, going on to say: “We are not hackers. Why would we do that?”
No-one is seriously suggesting that Pakistan Telecommunication deliberately tried to block the site globally. Just that they incompetently implemented an authoritarian order locally.
Thursday 28 Feb 2008 | Paul | Pakistan
