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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."

31 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Why'd they do that? by zedmelon · · Score: 5, Funny
    "Formerly the official homepage of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's regime, the site has been scrubbed clean of any traces of the fallen dictator..."

    Why'd they do that? Saddam will only wind up beheading the sysadmins who did it when he gets back from Wal-Mart, picking up this week's armament.

    --
    Mom says my .sig can beat up your .sig.
    1. Re:Why'd they do that? by Spruitje · · Score: 3, Insightful


      But Saddam's in Montreal, remember? Drinking martini's and laughing his arse off. Not in Good Old God Forsaken Family Values Walmart Censored America.


      Yeah, and he just got his holiday payment from the CIA.
      Wouldn't suprise me.

    2. Re:Why'd they do that? by qqtortqq · · Score: 4, Funny

      I work at an airport, and we have this one employee who is constantly calling the police department for one thing or another. One day she called the police and told them that Saddam was in the airport, buying a plane ticket. They came up and of course, refused to do anything about it, because it wasn't Saddam, so she called the FBI. They had to come out and take a statement from her and the police department. 3 weeks later, did the same thing because she saw Osama. So, maybe they are all in Indiana...

  2. yeah by Michael's+a+Jerk! · · Score: 3, Insightful

    pity about law and order.

    Great pirorities, guys.

    --

    I'm not Seth.

    1. Re:yeah by mrbrown1602 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Uh... if you actually read the article, this wasn't sanctioned or supported by the U.S. government, who is attempting to get law and order in Baghdad. These were just a couple of sysadmins who worked for the Hussein government who have been working (sucessfully) to get the state-run ISP back online.

    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:yeah by Kegetys · · Score: 3, Funny

      At least it will make the geeks go back inside.

    4. Re:yeah by dreadnougat · · Score: 4, Funny

      Uruklink... hmmm... uruk... uruk hai...

      orcs = evil...

      It seems Bush was right!

    5. Re:yeah by bj8rn · · Score: 3, Informative

      Uruk was the first major city in Sumer and the home of the legendary hero Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh built the city walls and the Eanna temple complex (dedicated to Ishtar, the goddess of love). There was a ziggurat in the temple complex - I wonder if the name Uruklink has anything to do with this, as the ziggurat was considered a link between Heaven and Earth.

      --
      Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
  3. The Iraqi Minister of Information says by rob-fu · · Score: 5, Funny

    "the ISP has not been restored, and its owners are committing suicide on the walls of Baghdad. I will take you there to show you. In ONE HOUR."

    1. Re:The Iraqi Minister of Information says by MeanMF · · Score: 3, Funny

      committing suicide on the walls of Baghdad

      ...on the FIREWALLS of Baghdad.

    2. Re:The Iraqi Minister of Information says by Mohammed+Al-Sahaf · · Score: 4, Funny

      The infidel american lies go deeper than that, my friend. They are not in Baghdad. They are not in control of any ISP. I tell you this. It is all a lie. They lie. It is a hollywood movie. You do not believe them. But let the American infidels bask in their illusion. We will welcome them with bullets and shoes.

      --
      Former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
  4. Hrmm by acehole · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought it was standard sysadmin practice to stop DOS missle attacks.

    --
    Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
  5. News flash by neirboj · · Score: 5, Funny
    "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."

    More recent intelligence suggests that the explosion was actually the resulted of an SCIS server reacting violently to being /.'d. US military experts are now considering trying to harness the power of slashdot to use as a weapon against terrorists.

  6. 10,000 LB bombs really mess up ur Routers...etc. by atarione · · Score: 4, Funny

    ALL YOUR ISP are Belong to US. good stuff, hopefully they can stop the continued attacks on US forces and restore order in general, but it's nice that Iraqis will soon be able to surf for pr0n again.

    --
    actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
  7. I know what happened! by mnewton32 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    The RIAA must have found out they were pirating music...
    (come on, it was either that or a Bill Gates finding out about a Linux server)

  8. How did they get the gear? by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I read the article and it said they did go around the UN embargo to get the equipment, but my question is who sold them the gear?

    I'm not trying to troll or anything, I'm really interested in this paradox.

    There were embargos put on Iraq following the war from the UN.

    Everyone violates the embargos.

    US goes around the UN.

    Everyone bitches about the US.

    No one bitches about the people who broke the UN embargo and thumbed thier noses at International Law.

    1. 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.

    2. Re:How did they get the gear? by zakezuke · · Score: 3, Interesting

      .... my question is who sold them the gear?

      I'm not trying to troll or anything, I'm really interested in this paradox

      While many nations did partisipate in a trade embargo, some nations did not.

      While I know jack squat about computer gear... there was alot of flack flying around about american ciggerettes making into iraq hands.

      [http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid =4 708]
      U.S. can't knowingly sell them in the Iraqi market -- either directly or through intermediaries -- unless they obtain a license from the U.S. government.

      It's no paradox at all. Assuming the goods were made in America they either had a license to sell to iraq, which is easy enough to believe. Alternativly good could be purchaced by nations neighboring and on good terms with iraq and taking into iraq borders.

      While computers are something listed as being a dual use item, as in could possibly be used as making weapons, the embargo in theory restricted their access. But it's not like Iraq didn't have free trade agreements with it's neighbors to import them. According to this bbc artical anyway... [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1959 481.stm]

      --
      There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
    3. Re:How did they get the gear? by Imperator · · Score: 3, Insightful

      True, but people broke the embargo because they know that an embargo almost never works against a dictator. Think about Cuba or North Korea, for example. The leadership stays strong and rich while the poor suffer. Breaking an embargo (which you have no legal necessity to follow) is hardly the same as starting a war aimed at conquering a country. I applaud the countries that shipped food, medicine, and consumer goods to Iraq. Yes, some may have been skimmed off the top by the government, but it gave to a brutally repressed people what they were too terrified to claim on their own.

      And yes, I know that in the long run most Iraqis will be better off without Hussein. That doesn't mean the method and circumstances of his removal were wise or just.

      --

      Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
  9. 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.

  10. Tomahawk DoS by mikeophile · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think this might be what Sen Hatch has in mind for copyright violators.

  11. Na, The Iraqi Minister of Information says by cliveholloway · · Score: 4, Funny
    "Our servers were never down. We were just on the receiving end of what you in the West call a 'Slashdotting'. Throughout this time all of our servers were responding quite accurately with the Iraqi insult '500 Server Error'. I am no master of your heathen tongue, but believe the nearest translation is 'die American scum'. A message that I'm sure we will be repeating to you very shortly."

    .02

    cLive ;-)

    --
    -- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
  12. Alas, ... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...to survive all that and then be taken out by a slashdotting.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  13. Not to treat the story seriously, or anything... by geekwench · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It would appear that the sysadmins literally poured blood, sweat, and tears into keeping the ISP up and running under Hussein. Not to mention going way above the "call of duty" to make certain that something of the equipment survived missle attacks, fires, and looting.
    The real point here is that contact with the outside world is an extremely valuable commodity to these people, and something that we in the Western nations take horribly for granted. Think of Iraqi expatriates in other parts of the globe who don't know if relatives are alive or dead. Or, in the interest of balancing out FoxNews' reporting, a hypothetical Iraqi blogger can now give the outside world a better picture of what's going on in the country. I think that this is a positive step towards rebuilding. Yes, it's an odd, sideways step, given the other needs. But when you consider just how much emotional investment the sysadmins had in this project, their priorities are entirely understandable.

    --
    Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
  14. firewalls by rf0 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well they aren't that effective against a DDOS by missiles. Prehaps they need to upgrade :)

    Rus

    --
    Cheap UK and US VPS
  15. 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.

  16. bootlegged software? by MavEtJu · · Score: 4, Funny

    had put in long hours cobbling together bootlegged software and

    Someone needs to tell these guys about FreeBSD and Linux.

    --
    bash$ :(){ :|:&};:
  17. We "liberated" the Iraqis... by switched4OSX · · Score: 5, Funny

    So they would be free to download pr0n. God bless America

  18. Re: Good TLD... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I heard that "low.iq" can be had at a bargain price.

    I don't understand.

  19. Dissapointing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I find it very telling that an unprovoked attack on the USA that killed around 2,795 is a "tragedy" and a "slaughter" and justifies destroying all our rights and 2 foriegn countries. And yet, another unprovoked attack that kills at least 3,240 civilians is just a "few sandy buttholes."