February 10, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — According to reports published this week, Web hosting provider United Colocation/SAGO Networks (sagonet.com) is thought to host a Web site used by hackers who temporarily disabled a Danish newspaper Web site that published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Danish police have been asked to investigate a group of hackers operating via the Tampa, Florida-based Web host, as reported by The Tampa Tribune on Wednesday. The cartoons, which first appeared last September in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, sparked an outcry from Muslim protesters. Many European newspapers have reprinted them in the past couple weeks as a show of support for free expression, sparking more demonstrations.
Jyllands-Posten journalist Lisbet Therkildsen says her paper was unaware that a Tampa-hosted Web site was claiming responsibility, and immediately forwarded the information to Danish police after receiving an email from the Tribune.
Peter Mathiesen, head of the information technology department with the Jyllands-Posten-Politiken group that includes the newspaper, told officials Wednesday that its servers have been under attack for the past two weeks. One attack was successful in shutting down the site, but it was restored. To date, the servers have received more than 100,000 spam mails including some threats.
