Re: Iraqi Internet communications still working 3/21/03

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

On Sat, 22 Mar 2003, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
> > The main Iraqi network connections are still functioning.  Uruklink.net,
> > Iraq2000.com, Baghdadlink.net, etc systems are responding.  The public web
> > servers appear to be very congested or non-responsive; but because I can
> > reach other systems (mail, dns, etc)  I suspect people are overloading
> > the webservers.
>
> My DNS shows www.thosedomains to be in iana-reserved space and dns is hosted at
> european satellite base stations ??

Interesting.  My DNS still had the old DNS/IP answers cached.  The servers
are still at the original addresess.  I DIGed abit and found the name
servers are now returning different addresses.

I'm guessing either the Iraqi state provider got tired of paying the
satellite upstream to carrier the HTTP packets.  At one point, a person
told me over 40% of the hits on the Iraqi web servers were coming from US
IP addresses.

Or someone has hacked their name servers.  I was also told the Iraqi state
provider was running a old, vulnerable version on their name servers.