Harvard University researchers who conducted the computer attack survey identified almost 300 attempts to silence independent media and human rights Web sites over the past year, NewScientist.com reported Tuesday.

"There is almost always a political component to these attacks," Jillian York, one of the report's authors, says.

The researchers focused on distributed denial of service attacks such as the one that temporarily crashed the WikiLeaks Web site last month.

Cyberattackers direct a flood of connections at a target Web site until the site, or the network that connects it to the Internet, goes down under the strain of the masses of incoming data.

While the WikiLeaks attacks were characterized as a new and dangerous attempt to limit free speech, they are anything but new, the Harvard team says.

York and her colleagues say they identified 140 attacks aimed at 280 media and human rights sites during the 12-month period ending in August.

Analysts say the attacks are often used as a form of protest, characterizing the assaults on PayPal and Mastercard after the companies severed ties with WikiLeaks as "virtual sit-ins."

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