Oppositional Azerbaijan “Azadliq” newspaper keeps facing hacker attacks and it made a statement calling on the authorities in Azerbaijan to stop the attacks on the newspaper.
“Azadliq” newspaper sites (www.azadliq.az; www.azadliq.info) keep facing hacker attacks. Recently the attacks have multiplied. The attack is a type of “SYN flooding”.
Hacker attacks make it hard for the readers to access the site and sometimes make it impossible. Resistance against the continued attacks has been possible by the hard job of the server service and preventive safeguard precautions.
“Azadliq” newspaper informed the public of the attacks for several times and called upon the appropriate bodies to prevent the attacks. No result followed. On the contrary, once newspaper published the fact that the attack had been implemented via the IP address belonging to the Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies.
The above-mentioned attack had taken place in March of the current year from the IP of 188.72.183 .0/24 and hundreds of logins observed in a second. Site had to stop its activity for a while.
The same happened in May from the IPs of 93.170.92.111, 93.170.92.52, 93.170.92.151 and server received 400 packets.
IP of 188.72.183.0/24 searched artificially innumerous words and the site base stopped working due to overloading.
Several times other kinds of hacker attacks were employed to gain a control over the site. IT team could have managed to prevent the threat.
“Azadliq” newspaper states that the attacks are bound to the incumbent regime’s intolerance to the critics and a part of silencing the dissent voice of the independent media.
Newspaper is believed to have Azerbaijani authorities behind the attacks and states to have many grounded reason for that.
International community knows well what kind of deprivations the newspaper faces for its tough position toward the regime. The philosophy behind the attacks is to limit the paper’s access to wider community and reduce the number of online readers from across the world.
“Azadliq” newspaper calls upon the authorities in Azerbaijan to stop the internet censorship and stop the hyper attacks against the paper. The paper also calls upon the international community to increase their attention to the fact of internet censorship in the country and make efforts to negotiate with the authorities of Azerbaijan to stop the above-mentioned hyper attacks.