BBC attacked, signs point to Iran

The BBC says it has been hit with a sophisticated cyber attack, targeting its Persian news service. The attack took the form of a distributed denial of service attack in London and the jamming of satellite feeds into Iran. Despite tight restrictions on journalists in Iran, the BBC has been allowed to operate the service, offering TV, radio, and online coverage in Farsi. BBC director-general Mark Thompson stopped just short of saying that the attacks were coming from the Iranian government but he described the attacks as “self-evidently suspicious.” Last month, Thompson accused the Iranian government of threatening and intimidating BBC journalists in an effort to get them to abandon work on the Persian news service.