Pakistan goes offline after almost killing YouTube
By Erna Mahyuni
Well, after the fiasco that was Pakistan’s attempt to block YouTube, the country’s been taken off the Net altogether.
Supposedly PieNet attempted to block YouTube in Pakistan due to a directive from the Pakistani government, the latter calling the site a source of ‘blasphemous’ content. ZDNet reported that PCCW, the telecom company that carries most of Pakistan’s traffic, had to shut the country off the Net.
YouTube was offline for two hours after Pakistani ISP PieNet attempted to block the site in the country. Their means of doing so, by rerouting all of YouTube’s incoming traffic, was a disaster and ended up blocking global traffic to YouTube.
ZDNet’s Richard Stiennon probably has the day’s funniest comment on the incident: “The leadership of Pakistan just created a massive Denial of Service on their own country.”
Pakistan isn’t the only country that’s resorted to policing the Internet with China and Burma also often resorting to blocking sites. But Pakistan’s probably the first to hijack a site altogether. Is this a taste of things to come, where sites deemed potentially ‘dangerous’ being subjected to cyber-tampering? Probably in this case PieNet wasn’t aware of the consequences of their creative re-routing.
But what is going to stop this from happening again to another site? And how are we sure this wasn’t an ‘uninformed accident’? Speculation, as always, will surely continue.
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February 26th, 2008
Pakistan internet traffic comes in and goes out from two nodes i.e., PIE and TWA1. Saying Pakistan was offline may make a catchy headline but it would be a bit further from the truth.
February 26th, 2008
I dont think youtube are to bothered :D , anyway can they get on it via a proxy ? just a thought
peter
viewlost.com
February 26th, 2008
Pakistanis r idiots, they should not surf the net, suckers. Block everything from them, all they can do is destruction, country full of retarded pple
February 27th, 2008
you idiot. It’s not people it’s their goverment. How can you blame single man for decision of not his own. Only the ones like you (ignorant, not open minded, agressive, impolite, racist and ect.) make those things happen. I dont blame americans for their president savage moves. Get a life, change your thinking or kill yourself. Pease
February 27th, 2008
I’m trying to guess who is more retarded with a comment like that. you or the pakistani.
And no I’m not Pakistani but I could say the same of USA… For voting twice in the same idiot!
You can’t judge a society by its leaders or a hand full of radicals that like to bow then selfs up.
February 27th, 2008
Yep. It’s true what you are saying. Especially when the promises from the polititians are far form the truth.
February 28th, 2008
They must have done some incredibly creative re-routing to actually effectively DDOS youtube.
Anyway. People like “Rock” (a truly imaginative name by the way) are the reason why wars are started (apart from US war’s. They are allways started for good reasons……).
Grow up mate, realise your not the only person in this world, and once you do realise that. Fucking live with it.
Tom
February 28th, 2008
# fhh:
February 28th, 2008
haha you cabt spell peaCe, pooface.
# fhh:
February 28th, 2008
haha you can’t spell peaCe, pooface.
you are a total idiot
and u ignorants go get a life and bother with smth. to help o live.
February 28th, 2008
ok well that is prolly the funnest shit i have herd in a long time LOL
i could block youtube rithg now from my town and not fuck up like that
March 6th, 2008
@DDD
really? you could block youtube from your town? impressive…
March 10th, 2008
I use http://strongvpn.com It’s a VPN site unblocking service. I’m using it for more than a year, and all that time it helped me a lot. I can access any site which was blocked before. And the amount fee is also very small, with such kind of service even my torrents speed increased up to 3 times!