Software developed in Britain has been used byIranian protestersto crash official
websites.
According to the
Sydney Morning Herald, British web designer Ryan Kelly claimed
a software application he developed to refresh websites
automatically was used to bombard official sites.
The software appears on his
website, which had an abrupt surgein traffic. It was originally
intended to be used to refresh websites with time-sensitive
information.
"Page Reboot allows you to continually refresh a website of your
choice, which is great for watching the closing minutes of an eBay
auction, making sure you don't miss the start of those ticket
sales, and anything else you can think of," claims the Pageboot
website.
Kelly told the newspaper: "I got lots of e-mails from Iranians
saying they were using the application to attack government
websites and bring them down."
He took his website down because the huge spike in Internet
traffic was exceeding his server limits. But he made it available
again after donations helped him cover maintenance costs.
Protesters also used Twitter to send messages to the outside
world when the Iranian government blocked websites such as Facebook
and YouTube but forgot about Twitter.
Twitter even
rescheduled an upgrade because protesters in Iran were reliant
on the microblogging website to share information.
Image :Sipa Press/Rex Features