Internet exposés brought down the minor officials, but there are reports that the Communist Party's central disciplinary inspection commission has started new investigations into money laundering through Macau.
(Writing on the same point, George Dyson makes the excellent suggestion of calling for a kind of emergency backup Internet, "assembled from existing cell phones and laptop computers," which would allow the transmission of text messages in the event that the Internet itself was brought down).
Mastercard has, however, commented on claims that pro-Wikileaks internet hackers had brought down its website.
But for all Watson knew, the lady might have recently seen one of those ill-informed Nightline stories about Anonymous and become worried she was about to have the full force of the Internet Hate Machine brought down on her.
The previous target was Dyn, a company that controls a large number of domain name service infrastructure that acts as a switchboard for internet traffic, through which the attack brought down major internet services across Europe and the US including Twitter, Netflix and Spotify.
But Russia's Itar-Tass news agency said a "powerful hacker attack" from abroad had brought down Internet servers inside the North.
The first footage from the game, a video trailer launched on the Internet Thursday evening, immediately brought down the Web site of Rockstar Games, the Take-Two division that makes Grand Theft Auto.
True to their word, unlike any other lobby, they were building tools for grassroots activism, with the audacious aim of bottling the rare Internet flash mob protests that brought down the entertainment industry-funded, Stop Online Piracy Act, and helped smartphone taxi service, Uber, overcome the Washington DC regulators.
The crisis sparked a diplomatic row with the UK as the demise of Landsbanki brought down its British internet banking arm, Icesave, leaving British councils, universities and hospitals more than £1bn out of pocket.
The Internet "would have had to be brought down to a level that is acceptable to a 6-year-old and that would have had a devastating effect on the kind of interactions that take place on the Internet," Mr. Hansen said.
