By Martha Waggoner
The Associated Press
R
A L E I G H, N.C., April 20 —
A hacker disrupted service for 36 hours at the Web site
that published satellite images of Area 51, the
top-secret Air Force test site in Nevada that has
fascinated UFO and conspiracy theorists for decades.
The
attack, combined with traffic 10 times what the site
usually bears, meant millions of people had difficulty
accessing the site or could not connect with it at all,
the company said today.
Did the attack come from outer
space? From the U.S. military? Or a bored computer geek?
The company wouldn’t say today, citing an ongoing
investigation.
The site, www.terraserver.com,
was running today, although some delays were possible.
“I won’t tell you
it’s completely solved,” said John Hoffman,
president of Raleigh-based Aerial Images Inc., which owns
and operates the site. “We’ve taken steps to
mitigate its effect. It’s almost a fact of being
online these days.” Attack Just Before Unveiling
The attack began within six hours of when images of the
8,000-square-mile Area 51, home to Groom Dry Lake Air
Force Base, became available at 8 p.m. Monday, Hoffman
said.
The site is averaging 7 million
to 8 million page views per day; typically, it averages
700,000 to 800,000. Aerial Images had expected from 3
million to 5 million daily views after the Area 51 images
were posted.
“As you can imagine, it
takes a while to figure it out when you’ve got that
huge volume of traffic,” Hoffman said. “Sorting
it out is challenging.”
Another
Denial of Service?
Hoffman declined to provide details of the attack. But
John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists in
Washington, D.C., said he would guess the attack was an
external denial of service, like the one that happened to
yahoo.com a few months ago, and not from someone who
gained access to the server.
“If you assume it’s a
denial-of-service attack, and you’re getting a lot
of traffic, it can be difficult to figure out if
it’s all from legitimate users or if some
significant chunk is from a machine set up to
specifically overload your server,” said Pike, the
federation’s Webmaster.
The release of the images
stirred up great interest in the base, which the Air
Force only recently acknowledged even existed. The base
is 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas, in the arid, rugged
Nellis Range. Its Area 51 nickname comes from its
designation on old Nevada test site maps.
Beginning with the U-2 spy plane
in the 1950s, the base has been the testing ground for
top-secret aircraft, including the SR-71 Blackbird and,
more recently, the F-117A stealth fighter and B-2 stealth
bomber.
Aircraft are not allowed to fly
over the base, but satellite overflights are allowed as
part of an agreement to verify arms-control compliance. 
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.
All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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W E B L I N K S
Area
51 Photos
Area 51 for UFO Buffs
SETI Institute
Scientific American:
SETI
Declaration of
Principles Following Extraterrestrial Detection
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