Access to China’s biggest search engine has been blocked, apparently by forces from Iran. But it’s not yet clear whether it was the site itself or its DNS records which were blocked.
For most of this morning (Chinese time) Baidu.com was unavailable to visitors, replaced with a message claiming the attack was the work of the Iranian Cyber Army. That’s a group which supports the current Iranian government and has previously been blamed for attacks on Twitter after the microblogging site attracted attention as an outlet for Iranians to speak out in the wake of disputed elections.
Baidu has not spoken about who might be responsible for the attacks, simply saying that Cheap Timberland Boots its domain registration was “tampered timberland boots with”. That suggests the attack involved setting the Baidu Web site address to redirect to a different Web site tan usual. If that’s the case, and given the sheer number of users, it’s lucky the attackers appeared to have merely been expressing a political message rather than aiming to distribute malware.
The motives for the attack don’t appear to be linked to any dispute between China and Iran itself. There are political dissidents in both countries which have faced online censorship. But if the Iranian Cyber Army is indeed a supporter of Iran’s regime, there doesn’t seem to be any logical reason why it would attack Baidu, which is largely compliant with China’s strict rules on internet content.
Depending on timberland mens boots your level of conspiracy theory beliefs, the attack could be the work of Iranian opposition forces who posed as the Iranian Cyber Army with the aim of provoking Chinese forces to respond by bringing down official Iranian sites — a tactic which, if true, has already paid off.
For those 6 inch timberland boots who want a more straightforward explanation, Baidu is one of the roll top timberland boots biggest sites in the world and bringing it down even temporarily would certainly be a great way to get publicity.
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