The Lausanne World Congress (for evangelical church and mission leaders) got hit with a denial of service attack and a computer virus as it got underway in Capetown SA.
SOUTH AFRICA 20 OCTOBER 2010 Organizers of Cape Town 2010, the widest gathering of Christians in the history of the Church, today announced that their internet communication to the outside world had been hacked. ‘We have 700 GlobaLink sites in 95 countries extending the Congress to 100,000 people’, said Victor Nakah, GlobaLink Chair for the Congress. ‘Finally, after two rough days, they are being served as planned.’
The sophisticated computer network developed for sharing Congress content with the world was compromised for the first two days of the Congress. ‘We have tracked malicious attacks by millions of external hits coming from several locations’, said Joseph Vijayam, IT Chair of The Lausanne Movement, sponsor of the gathering. ‘Added to this was a virus brought into the centre on a mobile phone.’
Asked if he could confirm where the hacking came from, he replied, ‘We have a pretty strong indication, but one can never be absolutely certain, so we prefer not to share our suspicions.’
While the official release doesn’t identify the country, others attending aren’t shy, saying the dedicated denial of service attack came from 66 locations in China. The official Laussane IT boss, Joseph Vijayam diplomatically told media hackers can make their work look like it’s coming from anywhere in the world. There was a kerfuffle with China prior to the gathering when 200 house church leaders from China were barred from attending by their government because the official church leaders in China had only been invited as observers.
Two IT volunteers from Bangladesh who just happened to have the necessary experience and skills, have the conference computer system up and running again.
Over 4000 church leaders from 200 countries are attending the third Lausanne global evanelization get together. Along with networking and discussions, a manifesto is produced.
The Third Lausanne Congress on world evangelization faqs
Update: First draft of The Capetown Commitment
Folk who would like to get one Canadian perspective, at least, on Lausanne in South Africa, might want to go to http://www.canadianchristianity.com and read the piece by Flyn Ritchie, president of Christian Info Society, which runs the website, BC Christian News and Options magazine. He actually has quite a personal touch that I found quite moving.
Doug Koop of ChristianWeek is also there. He may well have some stuff as well at http://www.ChristianWeek.org, although I haven’t checked there yet.
Thanks Lloyd.
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Dr. Carson Pue of Arrow Leadership says there are 79 Canadians attending, 50 are delegates, 29 are serving.