Cyber attack cripples Burma's web
According to a report on the Jakarta Globe, internet users have experienced slow connections and sporadic outages for more than a week.
"Our technicians have been trying to prevent cyber attacks from other countries," a technician from Yatanarpon Teleport said. “We still do not know whether access will be good on the election day."
It’s thought that Burma's internet system has been overwhelmed by a flood of incoming messages known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
US-based IT security firm Arbor Networks said the main state-owned ISP Myanmar Post and Telecommunications "suffered a large, sustained DDoS attack disrupting most network traffic in and out of the country."
The attack was said to be "several hundred times" more than enough to overwhelm the country's terrestrial and satellite links.
A section of users believe authorities are intentionally slowing services ahead of Sunday's vote, the first in 20 years in Burma.
"Although they said the connection has been attacked, it's hard to believe. I think they have been doing it intentionally for the election day to delay news reaching the international community," said a 25-year-old university student in the main city, Rangoon.
