US President George W Bush appears to be the latest victim in an online assault by Chinese hackers, as the White House website was unavailable for several hours on Friday, reported the BBC.online
The hackers' attack was similar to ones that took CNN and Yahoo offline last year.
The White House confirmed that for two hours and 15 minutes their website was unavailable, said the news service.
A White House spokesman said "there was no security breach, and the attack is under review."
The attack began between 1100 and 1200 GMT, said Dan Todd of Keynote Systems, which monitors website performance.
The company has computers all over the United States that monitor the responsiveness of websites.
"Beginning about 0445 am Pacific Time, the (White House) server stopped responding," Todd said, cited by the news service.
According to the BBC, hackers in the US and China have been engaged in an online battle this week.
Chinese hackers have defaced more than 660 sites in the past week, according to Michael Cheek with security firm iDefense.
The hackers promised a cyber-offensive against US sites in observance of Chinese of Labor Day on May 1 and Youth Day on May 4 and also in remembrance of the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade two years ago on May 7.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) had warned of the increased threat, and this week it said it had seen a significant increase in attempted attacks, the BBC added.
Sites are being actively scanned for weaknesses. "These probes and attempted exploitations currently number in the millions and the activity is ongoing," according to the FBI's National Protection Infrastructure Center.
The firm iDefense has been monitoring the activity of Chinese hackers. It put out an alert on 30 April, saying the hackers would specifically target 14 high-profile government and commercial websites – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
