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Sysadmins Restore Iraqi ISP

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the taking-one-for-the-team dept.

Hen3ry writes "Brian McWilliams of Wired News reports on the dedicated staff of Iraq's State Company for Internet Services, or SCIS, and how they built, maintained, and rebuilt Internet access before, during, and after the war. Ba'ath Party loyalists still run SCIS but their dedicated employees continue to press on. Fascinating stuff about how one sysadmin managed to keep the country online up until a US missle struck the roof of the Ministry of Information building."

4 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. iq by dtfinch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As soon as they're available, I suspect that a lot of people will want to register numeric .iq domains. 180.IQ will probably be the first to go.

  2. Re:yeah by sleeper0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    am i the only one reading between the lines here?

    "To keep the service running, SCIS engineers fended off denial-of-service attacks, domain hijackings and other foreign hacker intrusions, not to mention regular investigations from suspicious Iraqi government officials. "

    then later

    "According to Harif, the delay in bringing the Uruklink website back online is due to security concerns. While the site's content has been ready for weeks, he said technicians needed extra time to harden the underlying server software against electronic attacks."

    Didn't they probably have more trouble due to internet attacks before the fall rather than after? Also doesnt this quote seem odd, if you were explaining launching internet service you wouldnt say everything was ready to go to be turned on, except that you are still working on a big part of it.

    It seems to me the article is saying that someone else like the US government is delaying the return to service based on their monitoring equipment being installed. Or am i just being paranoid? Oh well, i supose thats what they call victor's rights.

  3. Re:How did they get the gear? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Living in an embargo'd country doesn't mean you can't get restricted stuff. It only means it costs more. Embargo'd countries are a seller's market.

    Same goes for illegal stuff.

  4. The pens mightier than the plowshare. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not so much electronic connectivity, but good old human communication. Iraq needs a free press among other things as well.