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from The Peninsula on Wednesday, March 12, 2003

DOHA: An unidentified organisation based abroad has been attempting to hack Qatar's first news portal, Al Jazeera Net (AJN), over the last few days, its Chief Editor Adulaziz Al Mahmoud, said yesterday.

The website plans to introduce four new links offering a variety of information to surfers, he added.

AJN is a portal hosted by Qatar's internationally reputed satellite TV station, the Al Jazeera Channel (JSC).

Currently, AJN, which was launched about three years ago, offers news, primarily in the Arabic language. A similar website in English is to be launched shortly.

The website, according to the official, receives some 10 to 13 million hits daily, of which some 45 per cent are accounted by Internet users in the US and Europe.

Speaking to The Peninsula yesterday, Abdulaziz said that in recent days, some unknown agency was trying to hack the www.aljazeera.net website very "fiercely."

These attempts were, however, unsuccessful, he added.

He said that the hacker tried to use a very sophisticated hacking system — by blocking a 100 mbps bandwidth. As a result of the bandwidth being blocked, no user could have accessed the website.

"Hackers usually attack the system but this was a very professional hack attempt, which only an organisation can undertake," he said, adding that no individual could possibly possess resources required to conduct such attacks.

AJN's website hosting firm in the US tried to trace the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the hackers but were unsuccessful as most of them turned to be false, he said.

The site will offer four new links shortly, Abdulaziz said.

These will offer news, general knowledge and insight reports, features, documentaries and information about the various programmes available on JSC.

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