Both Uighurs and Chinese attacking Film Festival site
Chinese nationalists are undoubtedly responsible for most of the online attacks against the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) online ticketing system but pro Uighur groups are also involved.
So says Rob R. [full name with-held* see below] , a director of Melbourne based eFirst.com.au, developers of the online ticketing system and associated online payments gateway at the MIFF web-site.
The MIFF web-site has been under attack for the last two weeks, in a Chinese government backed campaign of protest against the Festival’s screening of a pro-Uighur film –
“Ten Conditions of Love”, and the visit to Australia this week of prominent Uighur leader – Rebiya Kadeer.
“We’ve done a full incident reporting on the site and can back-track to see where the attacks are coming from.”
“Its fairly clear that some of the online forums in China distributing details of how to attack the ticketing system are pro-Uighur.
So we figure that they’re doing it because of the publicity and attention that the attacks on the site are giving to their cause.”
“Its actually business as usual at the MIFF web-site”, he said, “although because of the attacks we’ve had to restrict online ticketing to people who already have accounts.
That’s basically customers from previous years and/or people who’ve set up an online account earlier this year.”
Mr R said that despite the attacks on the MIFF web-site, which began two weekends ago, the online ticketing system is still working properly.
“The problems aren’t because the ticketing system is crashing. Quentin Tarantino’s new film -Inglourious Bastards - was booked out in five minutes, so the system is working despite the attacks”.
“No-one has actually been able to break into the ticketing system” he said.
Press reports suggesting that the online payments system supporting the MIFF site had been attacked were also incorrect, he said.
“We provide the online payments system for MIFF as well as the ticketing system”, he said “ and I can assure you that there is absolutely no problem with security of people’s credit card details or card numbers.”
He said that the upgraded security precautions taken at the site included blocks on Chinese (and indeed all non-Australian) Internet Protocol addresses, so that computers outisde Australia can no longer be used to try and clog-up the ticketing
system with phoney ticket requests.
And whilst he said it is true that some Australian based computers are now being used to try the same thing the evidence thus far suggests that these computers are actually being controlled from outside Australia.
“MIFF is very keen to prosecute anyone who is involved in these attacks because they are definitely affecting sales. So you’d be very foolish to try and do this from within Australia.
That’s partly why we believe the local computers being used to do this are in fact, being remotely controlled from outside Australia.
“Their Australian owners may not even know their machine is part of a overseas controlled botnet being used to perpetrate a denial of service attack.”
For more information go to
www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au
www.efirst.com.au
www.payments.com.au
We've with-held the full name of Rob R at his request.
"I don't want to have my name on the story as it makes me a target for some of the abuse that the MIFF staff have endured on their phones."
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