Internet connections at the New York Times were interrupted for at least several hours yesterday after the paper`s computers were flooded with information in an apparent attack.
"We do not know that it was malicious, but there seems to be no innocent explanation," wrote company network administrator Terry Schwadron in an e-mail to newsroom employees.
Shortly after 2pm New York time, the Times computers "started receiving a huge amount of electronic transmissions that flooded the machinery that protects the paper from hacker attacks," according to Schwadron`s e-mail, in what he called "denial of service activity".
In a denial of service attack, thousands of fake messages are sent to server computers, tying up the recipient`s network. The main White House Web site (http://www.whitehouse.gov) was hit with a similar attack in May.
The transmissions continued through 4.30pm, according to the e-mail. It was not immediately known when they ceased.
Fighting back
There are countermeasures for denial of service attacks, but only so much can be done, according to David Moore of the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) at the University of California-San Diego.
"Some tools help, but if someone wants to do a large denial of service attack, it is possible to overwhelm anyone," he said.
The New York Times Web site (http://www.nytimes.com) was online as of Tuesday evening. The site was vandalised with pornography and expletives in a 1998 attack.
Moore said a new attack on the Times would be no surprise. A recent study by CAIDA found there are about 20 denial of service attacks taking place at any given time.
A spokeswoman for the Times, reading a statement, said: "Some New York Times employees are experiencing difficulty accessing the Internet through their computers. Our technical staff is trying to determine the reason for this. At this time, we do not know the cause."
The spokesman confirmed the contents of Schwadron`s e-mail.
"A lot of different institutions get attacked," said Moore. "Sometimes there is a motive to get a political message across, so it could be something they`ve done recently at the New York Times that aggravated someone."
During the recent string of mail-borne anthrax transmissions, there have been at least two scares at the Times, including one letter filled with a white powder that was mailed to a reporter who wrote a book on bioterrorism. But tests at the paper have come up negative for the bacteria.
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