Area 51 Web Site Hacked

A hacker disrupted service for 36 hours to the Web site that displays detailed satellite images of Area 51, the top-secret Air Force site in Nevada.

Raleigh-based Aerial Images Inc. said the hacker struck six hours after five images of the desert proving ground were loaded Monday night onto the site.

The attack, combined with traffic 10 times what the site usually bears, meant millions of people had difficulty accessing the site or could not connect with it at all, company officials said. Service was disrupted until Thursday, when service was again running, with possible delays.

“I won't tell you it's completely solved,” said John Hoffman, Aerial Images president. “We've taken steps to mitigate its effect. It's almost a fact of being online these days.”

Did the attack on the site, which has fascinated UFO and conspiracy theorists for decades, come from outer space, the U.S. military, or a bored computer geek? Company officials wouldn't say, citing an ongoing investigation.

But John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists said he would guess the attack was an external denial of service, like the one that happened to Yahoo! a few months ago, and not from someone who gained access to the server.

“If you assume it's a denial-of-service attack, and you're getting a lot of traffic, it can be difficult to figure out if it's all from legitimate users or if some significant chunk is from a machine set up to specifically overload your server,” said Pike, the federation's Webmaster.

UFO and conspiracy enthusiasts believe alien technology is hidden at the base.

The Air Force only recently acknowledged that Groom Dry Lake Air Force Base even exists. Among UFO aficionados, it has long been known simply as Area 51, the base's designation on old Nevada test site maps.

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