Central Asia-Focused News Websites Targeted by Hackers

MOSCOW, November 20 (RIA Novosti) – News websites carrying critical coverage of the authoritarian Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan have been brought down by a massive denial-of-service attack.

Uzmetronom.com, which is run out of the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, and Moscow-based Fergananews.com initially became inaccessible on Monday morning and could still not be opened by Tuesday evening.

Fergananews.com editor Danil Kislov said the attack was notable for its scale.

Denial-of-service attacks paralyze websites and make them inaccessible to users by overwhelming their servers.

Critical news outlets in former Soviet Central Asia are regularly subjected to hacker attacks.