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DDoS attacks: is free speech a target?

The internet was once hailed as a free speech forum for the world – but are governments using DDoS attacks to threaten that ideal?

Long before its commercial possibilities were seen, the internet was being hailed as a free speech forum without borders, where ideas could be freely exchanged all around the world.

But recent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have raised the suggestion that some governments are as keen to stop free speech on the web as they are in traditional channels.

In May 2007 two major Russian newspaper websites were hit by DDoS attacks making them unavailable for almost a day.

Kommersant, one of the newspapers, had previously published a police interview with exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky in connection with the mysterious death of KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko.

DDoS attacks “politically motivated”
It was suggested that the DDoS attacks were revenge attacks for the newspaper’s espoused political views. Shortly afterwards the British Daily Telegraph website was attacked and blocked for 24 hours in another attack that may have been politically motivated.

There is nothing to suggest a government carried out the attack. DDoS attacks can be carried out by any group who want to silence the views of the company or website concerned.

Commenting on the Telegraph attack, William Beer, a director of security practice at Symantec, said, “In Italy a law was passed recently in relation to peer-to-peer software, and we saw a lot of internet-based threats directed at newspapers that were favourable to the new regulation".

When DDoS isn’t needed
Faced with mass demonstrations this autumn, the Burmese government didn’t need a DDoS attack to block internet access in its country – it closed down the only Internet Service Provider in the country. The news still got out, mainly thanks to the Internet.

And commercial pressures have come to bear as well – such as when Google agreed to modify its search engine to suit the government of China.

Improved DDoS protection will protect free speech
There have always been regimes that want to silence criticism or the views of its own citizens in the world – and the internet has been a thorn in their side for fifteen years or more. The potential for DDoS attacks gives them an added weapon in their fight against free speech.

As methods of protection against DDoS improve the web will hopefully regain its position as the free speech platform it started out as.

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