New Delhi - The websites of Mizzima News, an independent Burmese multi-media group based in New Delhi, have been crippled since Thursday evening because of suspension by its hosting server due to the site attracting several hacking attempts.
Mizzima' Canada-based hosting company, Hostpapa.ca, said it has suspended the sites – mizzima.com, mizimaburmese.com, mizzima.tv, and mizzimaphoto.com – after the sites attracted several hacking attempts and as it fears such attacks might also harm other sites on the server.
According to Mizzima's technical staff, the hacking attempt is very sophisticated, well-timed and organized. The hacking file used has more than 4,000 lines of code and is adapted from a popular PHP Shell script.
"Unfortunately to protect the servers and the other customers on your server we had to suspend your account," Hostpapa's technical support staff relayed in its notice to Mizzima.
While it is still difficult to technically trace who is behind the hacking attempts, Mizzima's technical staff said the main attempt is found to have originated from Russia with cooperation from other hackers in Germany, France and India.
"This sort of well-organized attacking can't be done by individuals but must instead be the disguised actions of an institution, most probably in this case the military regime could be behind the scene," Sein Win, Mizzima's Managing Editor said.
Burma's military junta, which has several of its technocrats training in several IT-related fields in Russia and other parts of the world, has imposed a ban on Mizzima's websites inside the country.
Though web users could still access the Mizzima sites by bypassing the government's Internet filtering systems through the help of proxy servers and browsing, the junta has made it an offense to surf the site and users who do could find themselves paying a heavy penalty if caught.
The junta has constantly blamed exile media groups as well as foreign broadcasting radio stations for producing information that reveals human rights violations inside Burma as well as the continued mismanagement of the country.
In its campaign against foreign broadcasting stations after the September 2007 protests, the junta, in its mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar, carried slogans that stated: "Skyful of liars attempting to destroy nation, BBC lying, VOA deceiving, RFA setting up hostilities. Beware don't be bought by those ill-wishers," referring to the services of the UK's British Broadcasting Corporation, US's Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.
This is the second instance in which Mizzima's sites have been the target of hackers. In July, Mizzima websites were crippled due to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). Mizzima, however, was not alone in suffering such attacks.
Also in July, the website of the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) suffered a similar DDoS attack, while in September DVB along with two other websites of exile Burmese media groups – the Chiang Mai-based Irrawaddy and Bangkok-based New Era Journal – came under the crosshairs of a DDoS attack, causing inaccessibility to their sites on September 24th, two days before the crack-down on last September's protests.
"Mizzima is serving the people. We should all work together to sue or to crack-down against these criminals," Sein Win said.
Mizzima News Agency, run by Burmese journalists, is an independent Burmese multi-media group focusing on Burma and Burma-related news and issues, and maintains four different websites - mizzima.com, mizzimaburmese.com, mizzima.tv and mizzimaphoto.com.
Besides offering updated daily news both in English and Burmese, Mizzima also podcasts video stories on its mizzima.tv site, stories which are frequently picked up by other news organizations.
Mizzima, as a member of the international media watchdog International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX), and as partner of the regional media watchdog Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), has been producing media alerts on the violations of freedom of expression and press in Burma for over a decade.
Both Mizzima's Burmese and English sites normally attract an average of 10,000 to 15,000 unique visitors per day, but the readership suddenly jumped to hundreds of thousands during the September 2007 protests in Burma and in May and June 2008, following the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis.
