On Saturday at 21.15 PM (CET) a denial of service attack was launched against DVB’s English and Burmese websites.

Approximately 500 users attacked both sites in an effort to overwhelm the server.

The hacker group Blink claimed responsibility for the attack on their webpage and invited other hackers to join the cyber assault. The group posted step-by-step instructions guiding potential hackers on how to participate.

A DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to disable a website by overwhelming the site with information requests so that it cannot respond to regular traffic.

On Blink’s website they’ve posted a rolling message reading: “in order to cleanse our religious land, sometimes we have to bloody our hands”.

The message refers to the ongoing sectarian violence in Arakan state and can be translated as a threat aimed at the area’s Muslim minority.

However, DVB’s director Aye Chan Naing said although it was made to look like an attack from people who were disappointed with DVB’s reporting [on the riots in Arakan state], findings showed that it was obviously planned and carried out systemically by a certain group.

About 75 of the hackers’ IP addresses came from both Russia and Singapore.

The attacks in Russia were launched from several universities in Moscow, St Petersburg and Kaluga.

All the Russian universities involved in the attack have Burmese citizens enrolled who study computer science and nuclear technology.

Similar attacks targeted Burmese-exile media groups in 2008 and 2010 on the anniversary of the September 2007 uprising.

-Correction: Previously, DVB reported that 75 percent of the hackers’ IP addresses came from both Russia and Singapore. This information was wrong and has been corrected