- Online services of afrol News have experienced serious problems last weeks following an attack by hackers. "We will not be gagged," the afrol News editor promises, after new security tools were implemented.
Unknown hackers attacked the afrol News website in end-April, causing serious trouble for this outspoken independent media.
Two kinds of attacks have been identified. First, repeated bundled attacks on the server, flooding it with false requests, aimed at making the server hosting afrol News to collapse.
In a second attack, hackers managed to find a security hole and publish junk messages on the afrol News website, most of which were hidden. One of the aims of these junk messages was to make search engines such as Google to blacklist this media.
Especially the second attack caused temporal damage to afrol News, with large efforts to improve security impeding the media's English language services to update. Through a backdoor, however, Spanish language services could be partially upheld.
"We cannot exclude political motives for the attack on afrol News," chief editor Rainer Chr Hennig emphasises. "Our outspoken line is not popular among several groupings, and we have received some threats over our reporting, especially regarding Eritrea," the editor adds.
Mr Hennig assures readers that security now has been improved, strongly reducing risks. "afrol News has been an important independent voice of African news for exactly ten years now, and readers do not need to worry. We will be here for decades to come - no hacker or other will stop us!"
Staff in charge of security also wished to assure readers that there never was any danger for readers or their pcs when browsing the afrol News site during the hackers' attack. "This was confirmed to me from day one," the editor emphasises.
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