"Pinging" disrupted access to NATO's Web site RELATED AUDIO NATO spokesman talks about email bombardment 384 K/30 sec. AIFF or WAV sound  ALSO NATO homepage

March 31, 1999
Web posted at: 10:42 a.m. EST (1542 GMT)

BRUSSELS, Belgium (CNN) -- NATO's Web site is under deliberate electronic "bombardment" from Yugoslavia that has made e-mail service and access to the site "erratic," NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said Wednesday.

Shea said that computer users in Belgrade have been "pinging" the NATO site -- sending repeated requests to the NATO server to confirm that it's online -- since Sunday. The "ping bombardment strategy," Shea said, has "caused line saturation" and noticeably disrupted access to the alliance's Web site.

NATO's Web site contains the latest news releases and transcripts of news conferences concerning the campaign against Yugoslavia. Journalists around the world, as well as other people, look at the site for information.

Additionally, Shea said NATO's e-mail servers were being "saturated by one individual who is currently sending us 2,000 e-mails a day."

"And we are dealing with macro viruses from Yugoslavia in our e-mail service," he said.

Shea did not say whether the "macro viruses" he mentioned were from the recently released "Melissa" virus that causes e-mail recipients to unknowingly spread infected files to other e-mail users.

The NATO spokesman said that, despite the problems, NATO would continue to put out up-to-date information.

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