(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — To commemorate a week of unusually singular focus on a particular subject, I now present you with “the week in outages and downtime.”
Things started off hot Monday, with a report on the online aspect of the conflict currently taking place in the Gaza Strip. We reported that anti-Israeli hackers had defaced or taken down more than 300 Israeli websites in a 48-hour period over the weekend, in a response to Israel’s raids on Gaza (which itself was a response to rocket attacks, and so on).
Unsurprisingly, the cyber attacks generated a new wave of coverage on an already hotly-debated subject. On Thursday we ran a Noise Filter feature, assembling some of the most compelling coverage of the electronic battle taking place alongside the real-world attacks.
In a similar real world conflict gone online, we reported on Monday that government-operated websites in India and Pakistan had been defaced in the wake of November’s Mumbai terrorist attacks. The story details several instances of defacements, going in both directions – Indian groups hacking Pakistani sites and vice versa.
Wednesday’s hijacking of the Mac Rumors site’s live feed from the MacWorld Expo was motivated less by politics and more by mischief, and was not so much a “hack” as a stream of mischievous users slipping through a back door that had been left open.
Later in the week, an outage at SaaS giant Salesforce.com, this one caused by more run of the mill network and hardware failures rather than hacking, drew another wave of discussion. Online commenters called the outage evidence of the “dark side” of cloud computing while others pointed to the possible folly in hosting your network performance dashboard on your own network.
This week’s most significant story was undoubtedly the hacks related to the Gaza conflict, which was itself the biggest mainstream news story this week. The two angles are more than likely to have the most ongoing relevance as the story, and the conflict, continues to develop.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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