April 8, 2008
In what was apparently not an April Fool's joke, the news site Menassat reported that hackers managed to cut off access to many official Syrian websites during the Arab Summit in Damascus. Affected sites included the official Syrian news agency, newspapers, and news-oriented websites.
The outages were the result of a distributed denial-of-service attack, in which the hacker floods the victim's site with traffic and overwhelms its ability to function. It was speculated that the attack was launched by sources opposed to the summit in Damascus.
The attack is a reminder that there are many different motives behind internet attacks, and that political agendas remain an important one. In 2009, Qatar will host the next Arab Summit, and this incident should serve as a reminder that we need to be prepared for similar attacks.