Late last week, leaders of a group of Chinese hackers called off a planned denial of service attack on CNN.com, after it was reported on the same day that the attack would occur over the weekend, in protest at "anti-Chinese" media across the Western world.
The original deadline for the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack of 8 pm Beijing time, passed without incident, after The Dark Visitor — a Web site that follows Chinese computer hacker activity — first revealed plans for the attack on Friday morning.
"Our original plan for 19 April has been cancelled because too many people are aware of it, and the situation is chaotic," cyberprotest organisers said in a statement. "At an unspecified date in the near future, we will launch the attack. We ask that everyone remain ready."
Dubbing their action the "Revenge of the Flame", the groups stated aim was to link loyal Chinese Internet users against the Western media, symbolised in an attack on CNN.com.
However, early Saturday morning, a post on The Dark Vistor contained detailed plans for various Revenge of the Flame participants, as though the attack were continuing.
"We want to be patriotic," one organiser wrote, as it emerged that several groups of Internet organisers had planned to show on Saturday that they can mobilise patriotic Chinese Internet users to wield their influence worldwide against what they say is anti-Chinese media in the Western world.
After Jose Nazario of Arbor networks indicated there had been little pre-attack activity leading up to the deadline, CNN reported on Friday that it had suffered some outages in Asia on Thursday, appearing to corroborate information provided by Nazario previously.
Meanwhile, another site, Anti-CNN.com, claims that protests in favour of China have not been published fairly by Western media in Germany, France, Canada, and the US.
A banner on the Anti-CNN.com says: "We are not against the Western media, but against the lies and fabricated stories in the media." The site includes example headlines from Der Spiegel, The Washington Post, and Fox News, in which it claims that photos of the police attacking the monks are Nepalese, not Tibetan.
Wow ... DDos attacks by people supporting a country where there is an utter lack of balance in the press complaining about a lack of balance in the press.
Ironic or perverted?