Hackers attack Falklands War game

UK hackers have attacked an Argentine online video game recreating scenes from the Falklands War and allowing players to shoot British "terrorists".

Argentine company Dattatec.com this week launched a "map" for popular online first person shooter game Counter Strike pitting Argentine police against British terrorists.

The game's developers said they had repelled a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack coming mostly from computers in the UK.

Fernando Llorente, a spokesman for the Rosario-based company, said: "Two of our websites were attacked using DDoS during the day, with hackers trying to saturate our server's connexion. The attack was 5 Gbps in strength - the equivalent of 5,000 PCs connecting to the sites at the same time every second - but our technical team was able to block it effectively.

"Generally these attacks come from eastern Europe and China, but we detected that most although not all of the IP addresses used this time were from the UK. At Dattatec we habitually receive different scopes of attack - this is the first one that has come mainly from the UK, although I cannot affirm that it was a case of cyber warfare.

"We think diplomacy should prevail between Argentina and the UK and we do not fear another attack - when someone tries to hit a server and is blocked, they do not try again."

Counter Strike features two opposing groups of players, with one side playing police and the other terrorists. Dattatec's adaptation of the game features an opening video which reads: "In 1982, Argentines fought the English to recover the sovereignty of their Malvinas islands" - the Argentine name for the disputed territory.

The company said it had left British flags out of the map "out of respect to the honour and glory of those who fell in the Malvinas".

Mr Llorente said the game had been downloaded by 15,000 users since it was launched on Monday.

An estimated 650 Argentines, 255 British servicemen and three islanders died in the 1982 conflict. This month, Falkland Islanders overwhelmingly voted in favour of remaining a British Overseas Territory in a referendum, although Argentina's foreign minister, Hector Timerman, described the vote as "illegal".