Five Web sites run by Chinese human rights activists were attacked by hackers
over the weekend, as a separate row continued between Google and China over
political cyberattacks.
The Web site of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group, was hit by
a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that lasted 16 hours starting
Saturday afternoon, the group said in an e-mailed statement on Monday. A DDoS
attack involves the attacker ordering a legion of compromised computers all to
visit a certain Web site at once, overwhelming its server with requests for
communication and leaving the site inaccessible to normal visitors. The group
said it could not confirm the origin of the attackers but called the Chinese
government the most likely suspect.