RIYADH, 7 February — King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) has said that the problem being faced in gaining access to Internet is due to "denial of access" attacks,  a form of hacking resorted to by some unscrupulous elements.

Commenting on the Internet access problems during the past five days, Dr. Fahad Al-Hoymany, director of Internet Unit at KACST, told Arab News that the problem arose because some unknown sources were jamming Internet access by trying to keep the system busy thereby causing a communications breakdown.

"It's like sending thousands of cars on the road from  Riyadh to Jeddah, blocking your free access to  the highway. You cannot do anything about it, since they try to block you from different directions."

Internet users say ISPs are blaming KACST for the problem which has been persisting since Thursday. A majority of the users, who rely on Yahoo and Hotmail, told Arab News that the browsing speed had slowed down considerably rendering Internet access nearly impossible during the peak hours. Only those with dish antenna are able to ride out the problem.

Asked if the launch of Internet in Saudi schools would not expose the students to unhealthy influence, Dr. Hoymany said there were various ways of blocking access to sites deemed unfit for children. "KACST has already blocked access to about a million sites as part of our ongoing monitoring program."

He said there were some 50 million sites available on the Internet. KACST's strategy would be to prevent students from visiting any site of their choice by having a blacklist of such sites. Similarly, the "whitelisted" sites would be those to which access is allowed. These are the educational sites or those with useful content from the children's point of view.

As for connectivity, there will be four lines, two each from Riyadh and Jeddah. The installation of the Jeddah lines will be completed by the end of March.

The number of Internet users, he pointed out, has gone up to around 270,000, making the Kingdom the top Internet user in the Middle East with the growth rate more than doubling every year.