When Temasek Review (TR) published its article last week accusing SPH of trying to cripple its web server, I felt strongly that it should not be ignored as just another piece of the usual nonsense hurled at the company, often from the cover of anonymity.
I advocated that we respond to the serious allegations made in the article, 'SPH IP address caught “grabbing” content from Temasek Review server' .
(http://www.temasekreview.com/2009/11/02/sph-and-recent-ddos-attack-on-temasek-review/)
No one coerced me to write it. I hope that answers some comments made on and about my blog, published last week, on Nov 6:
http://blogs.straitstimes.com/2009/11/6/attack-on-temasek-review-site-not-sph
TR reacted profusely, to say the least. It has published no fewer than 7 articles on the topic, when I counted yesterday (Nov12) . All but one – a letter – were belligerent in tone and designed to ridicule me and my company.
Among the points these tried to make:
- TR never accused SPH of having a go at its server;
- I got the timing of the alleged attack wrong;
- my explanation, involving spoofing in Denial-of -Service (DOS) attacks, was wrong.
The articles also tried to shift focus away from a DOS attack to SPH’s alleged “grabbing” of TR content.
There were some humorous detours, such as in ‘25 SPH employees “caught” surfing Temasek Review in 3 days’, published on Nov 7.
(http://www.temasekreview.com/2009/11/07/25-sph-employees-caught-surfing-temasek-review-in-3-days/ )
This spoke about how journalists – from both SPH and Today – were visiting TR to “fish for news to write with most of them lacking the basic courtesy to even acknowledge their source of information”.
But the funniest was this: “Despite our sometimes fierce rhetoric against SPH journalists, we have really nothing against them personally. In fact, we are very sympathetic of the situation they are in: they are paid pittance and made to work long hours.”
It went on to add: “When our media company is finally incorporated next year, we will give our full-time journalists a better deal. SPH journalists are more than welcomed to join us.”
Wow.
Also interesting was the letter sent to SPH’s CEO, and published in TR on Nov 8.
( http://www.temasekreview.com/2009/11/08/temasek-review-writes-to-sph-ceo-alan-chan-to-seek-further-clarifications/ )
In it was a surprise statement, referring to TR's original article:
“Our correspondent who drafted the article was not familiar with IT matters. We apologize if our article has caused some misunderstanding and we have already clarified the matter in subsequent articles.
"We have never intended to implicate SPH with the DDOS attack on our server which had occurred a day earlier and we are sorry for any distress caused.”
Wow (again). They pelt me with rotten tomatoes and roast me, deny that they made accusations against SPH. At the same time, they say sorry to my CEO for hurling accusations.
Well, SPH does not reply to letters from unidentified parties (even if they have e-mail addresses), so TR – whose editor has no name, no face – should not hope for one from my CEO.
On Nov 10 yet another article from TR:
( http://www.temasekreview.com/2009/11/10/sph-journalist-geoffrey-pereira-got-boomzed-on-his-blog/comment-page-1/ )
This was a compilation of anonymous comments, mostly poking fun at my original blog, and which TR filed under “Top News”. It was back to pelting and roasting.
The summary of all this is, in a space of just under a week, TR has gone on overdrive to increase traffic to its site.
It has said so many things – including denying, then accepting, that it had accused SPH of trying to cripple its server – almost in the same breath. Wayang would be an apt term to describe it.
I will be unequivocal and reiterate what I said in my earlier blog: SPH made checks spanning a period that extended to before and after the alleged attack .
Our checks found that neither SPH as a company, nor any employee as an individual, launched a DOS attack on TR's web server. There was also no attempt to "grab" TR material in a way that could overload its server.