IN ONLINE games like World of Warcraft, the violence is normally restricted to fantasy realms populated by orcs and wizards. But when a dispute broke out between rival gaming services recently, it brought down large chunks of China鈥檚 internet.
Problems started when hackers linked to an unnamed gaming company launched an attack on a server that provides access to a competitor site. The Xinhua News Agency says the attackers disabled the server by flooding it with incoming signals. Other, connected servers were slowed too, in a chain reaction that caused internet problems for 300 million people.
Two suspects were arrested on 29 May. Chinese authorities rate the disruption to the country鈥檚 internet as the worst since an earthquake ruptured undersea cables near Taiwan in 2006.
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