Hackers attack website that covers Sudan’s war-torn regions

The website is concerned for its correspondents after the DDoS attack Nuba Reports, a news website specializing in covering the Sudanese war-torn states of South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Darfur, is concerned for the safety of its local correspondents after it was the target of a Distributed Denial of Service attack yesterday. “Hackers are trying to shut down the Nuba Reports website,” its staff said in an alert issued yesterday. “This morning, the website was hit with a massive DDoS attack, which crashed NubaReports.org for about five minutes. Since then, the site has been restored and is still running despite continued attempts to take it down.” The attack comes three days after a paper by Nuba Reports was circulated during the 27th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Entitled “Khartoum’s War on Sudan”, it summarized human rights violations since 2012 in the three regions the website covers. “This cyber-attack on the Nuba Reports website is worrying,” said Cléa Kahn-Sriber, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Africa desk. “While those responsible have yet to be identified, we know that the Sudanese government has already censored media covering the conflict in South Kordofan.” Nuba Reports is regarded as one of the very few sources of neutral reporting coming out of South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Darfur, three regions where the Sudanese army is fighting rebel groups. It uses local correspondents who try to cover the situation from the civilian population’s viewpoint and who draw attention to human rights violations in this often forgotten conflict. Sudan is ranked 172nd out of 180 countries in the 2014 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index. (photo: NubaReports.org)