South Africa news site says under massive India cyberattack after Modi story

NEW DELHI - A leading South African news site said it came under a "malicious cyberattack" from India after it reported on Wednesday that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi refused to get off his plane on Tuesday at Waterkloof Air Force Base near Pretoria over a purported ceremonial snub.

Daily Maverick's report, denied by South African Deputy President Paul Mashatile's office in comments published in the Indian and South African media, said Modi was upset because the South African government had initially sent only a cabinet minister to receive him upon arrival for the Aug 22-24 BRICS leadership summit in Johannesburg.

"By contrast, President Cyril Ramaphosa had personally been on the tarmac to greet Chinese President Xi Jinping when he arrived on Monday night," Daily Maverick reported in its story titled "Tough Love Triangle: While Ramaphosa focused on Xi, Modi threw a tantrum and refused to get off his plane."

Modi was welcomed at Waterkloof by the deputy president, but Daily Maverick said this was not as per prior arrangements and Mashatile was only dispatched in a hurry by Ramaphosa from a government event to placate the Indian leader.

However, a spokesperson for Mashatile said the deputy president was present at the air base before Modi landed.

"The DP (deputy president) was well aware, ahead of time, that the Indian PM (prime minister) would be arriving and that he would be receiving him. He was there well before PM Modi landed," Mashatile's spokesperson Vukani Mde was quoted as saying by South Africa's News24.

While reporting that it was under a "massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack", Daily Maverick said in social media posts that it stood by its Modi report.

The website's security coordinator said the cyberattack flooded the site with bot traffic with the intention of taking it down.

"We investigated and found it was coming from a whole host of Indian servers," the security coordinator said.

The website was inaccessible from India early on Thursday.

"It was obvious that the purpose of this attack is to deny the people of India access to this story as no attempt was made to hide the source of the attack. This left us with no option but to block the entire domain of India to protect the integrity of the site," editor-in-chief Branko Brkic said.

He also said Daily Maverick "stands by its story and will continue to report on developments". - BERNAMA