Hacker News Reader

Oof, my heart goes out to them. My very first week at [large popular public code forge], we were attacked by [state level actor], probably for hosting something that [state] didn't like. In a way, SourceHut and Codeberg getting this kind of attention is an encouraging sign that these alternative forges are starting to gain traction.

View on HN

I wonder how you could figure out it was [state]. Was there some clear threat made? A blackmail "do this, or else.."?

This is likely a reference to GitHub, which was DoSed by the Chinese government for hosting a repository that was mirroring uncensored Western media on a domain that could not be blocked by the Great Firewall without hobbling the Chinese software industry.

The attribution wasn't subtle - a substantial fraction of Baidu's ads/analytics traffic served to domestic Chinese users was rewritten to hammer that specific repository directly.

NYT coverage at the time: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/technology/china-appears-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com