UFO Buffs Flock to Hacked Web Site RALEIGH, N.C., April 20 — A hacker disrupted service for 36 hours at the Web site that published satellite images of Area 51, the top-secret Air Force test site in Nevada that has fascinated UFO and conspiracy theorists for decades.
The attack, combined with traffic 10 times what the site usually bears, meant millions of people had difficulty accessing the site or could not connect with it at all, the company said today.
Did the attack come from outer space? From the U.S. military? Or a bored computer geek? The company wouldn’t say today, citing an ongoing investigation.
The site, www.terraserver.com, was running today, although some delays were possible.
“I won’t tell you it’s completely solved,” said John Hoffman, president of Raleigh-based Aerial Images Inc., which owns and operates the site. “We’ve taken steps to mitigate its effect. It’s almost a fact of being online these days.”
Attack Just Before UnveilingThe attack began within six hours of when images of the 8,000-square-mile Area 51, home to Groom Dry Lake Air Force Base, became available at 8 p.m. Monday, Hoffman said.
The site is averaging 7 million to 8 million page views per day; typically, it averages 700,000 to 800,000. Aerial Images had expected from 3 million to 5 million daily views after the Area 51 images were posted.
“As you can imagine, it takes a while to figure it out when you’ve got that huge volume of traffic,” Hoffman said. “Sorting it out is challenging.”
Another Denial of Service?
Hoffman declined to provide details of the attack. But John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C., said he would guess the attack was an external denial of service, like the one that happened to yahoo.com a few months ago, and not from someone who gained access to the server.
“If you assume it’s a denial-of-service attack, and you’re getting a lot of traffic, it can be difficult to figure out if it’s all from legitimate users or if some significant chunk is from a machine set up to specifically
overload your server,” said Pike, the federation’s Webmaster.
The release of the images stirred up great interest in the base, which the Air Force only recently acknowledged even existed. The base is 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas, in the arid, rugged Nellis Range. Its Area 51 nickname comes from its designation on old Nevada test site maps.
Beginning with the U-2 spy plane in the 1950s, the base has been the testing ground for top-secret aircraft, including the SR-71 Blackbird and, more recently, the F-117A stealth fighter and B-2 stealth bomber.
Aircraft are not allowed to fly over the base, but satellite overflights are allowed as part of an agreement to verify arms-control compliance.
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by Martha Waggoner
The Associated Press