"DDoS against Dhiraagu is malicious and causes harm to Dhiraagu and society. Today people's lives are connected to Internet. They use Internet to pay zakat and to read websites recruiting Maldivians for jihad in Afghanistan. Internet should not be disrupted," the ministry said.
The group behind the attack said on twitter that the attack was a result of Dhiraagu's outrageously high prices:
Parliament members raised their elevenses. We want to lower our ISP prices!
Our primary target: Dhiraagu Network
Islands of Maldives also need internet at high speed, Not at snails pace! http://goo.gl/mI5vq #fb #dhiraagufail @DHIRAAGU how about 1 laari per ddos packet
Islamic Ministry also condemned Dhiraagu for charging high prices from customers. Islam instructs people not to cheat when doing business and to charge reasonable prices, Minister Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari said. He recalled the story when Caliph Umar bin Khattab overheard a woman telling her daughter to mix water with milk to increase volume of milk when selling. Umar was disguised as an ordinary man and strolling through the city of Medina during the night to see if everything was alright. (This practice of walking around the city in disguise was later copied by King Abdullah of Jordan, President Nasheed of Maldives and Batman in Gotham City. President Nasheed did this during Ramadan.) Umar overheard the girl tell the mother it would be against Islam to add water to milk and that the Caliph said not to mix things with milk. Umar summoned the girl and mother next day to his court and rewards the girl by offering her one of his sons to marry.
"Umar was known as Umar Farooq (he who distinguishes truth from falsehood) for his just ways. Sadly in Maldives we don't have such people now. We only have a Farooq Umar (Soarey) who is the Chairman of STO," Abdul Majeed said.
Majeed said Dhiraagu charges high prices for very few kilobytes of data and it was like mixing water with milk.
Naseem, who is a friend of the owner of this blog and who had helped in editing the posts, said the attack on Dhiraagu is a result of repeatedly ignoring requests by customers to reduce the prices. Naseem went to Communications Authority of Maldives in 2009 to complain about Dhiraagu's prices.
"If they listened to me then and improved services we will not be facing this problem. Now a group of teenagers are disrupting the whole Internet in Maldives through DDoS," Naseem said.
Naseem, who is celebrating getting 3,000 people's signatures to form his mentor Dr Munavvar's party, said their party will take the issue of Dhiraagu's sale of shares to Cable & Wireless.
