The short story so far: a pro-China hacker group that considered an article published by CNN offensive for their country prepared what they wanted to be a destructive attack over the website, in a move to take the page down. The attack was first scheduled for April 19 but, in a statement published by a member of the group, the hackers announced its delay. According to Dark Visitor, a blog which translated the hackers' statement, they postponed the attack due to the fact that too many people were informed about their plans.

"Our original plan for 19 April has been canceled because too many people are aware of it and the situation is chaotic. At an unspecified date in the near future, we will launch the attack. We ask that everyone remain ready. I will repeat it again. At an unspecified date in the near future, we will launch the attack. We are only at present cancelling the attack. We could send out a notice on the day of the attack and have it completed in one day. The attack hasn't been cancelled; it will be carried out on an unspecified day in the near future. I think everyone understands what we mean," the hacker group, nicknamed "Revenge of the Flame", explained according to Dark Visitor.

Although the hackers delayed the assault, it seems like some of the members couldn't be stopped and launched the attack over CNN's website on Saturday. Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks, a traffic monitoring company, wrote on Saturday that some attacks targeting CNN's servers were spotted, but nothing that could take the website down.

"So far there have been a few attacks seen by ATLAS (a few SYN and ICMP floods), but nothing too big. All of the attacks have been under 100 Mbps as we can see, well under the mean attack size we typically see. More attacks to report, with greater intensity. It look s like some people still giving this a go," he wrote.

CNN confirmed the attacks and admitted that the traffic has been filtered a few days ago, some of its Asian users being affected by the restrictions. "CNN took preventative measures to filter traffic in response to attempts to disrupt our Web site. A small percentage of CNN.com users in Asia are impacted. We do not know who is responsible, nor can we confirm where it came from," the company said in a statement.