Indy Media Watch

Melbourne Indymedia is offline.

The server that hosts Melbourne Indymedia has suffered from a DDOS attack, taking the machine offline. This time around it appears to be politically motivated, though it is unknown if it was specifically directed at Indymedia. We are working on getting the site, along with Adelaide and Aotearoa Indymedias, back online as soon as possible. We ask for your patience.

It is unclear how long this has been the case, or whether the Denial of Service attack is still going. It doesn't give any information as to why the attack is "politically motivated". Whilst this wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, it does seem a little premature in the absence of any evidence as provided.

Maybe someone can clarify, but doesn't a DDOS attack mean the bandwidth to a site is used up and the machine itself wouldn't neccessarily suffer damage, merely overload? I would have thought if they could get a page like that up there, something must be working right...

In any case, the material currently visible is probably an improvement.

Update: Via the comments it is possible Indymedia may have been caught in the crossfire of an attack:

directed at an anti-nazi site that was hosted on the same server as the 3 indymedias down.

If Indymedia and an anti-nazi site were on the same server to begin with, I'm surprised the hard drive didn't tear itself apart long ago.

Update 2: Now back online, the management of Melbourne Indymedia suspect the same motivation. The anti-Nazi site has moved to another server. Obviously the irony was too much...