A Georgian blogger with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and Google's Blogger and YouTube was targeted in a denial of service attack that led to the site-wide outage at Twitter and problems at the other sites on Thursday, according to a Facebook executive.
The blogger, who uses the account name "Cyxymu," (the name of a town in the Republic of Georgia) had accounts on all of the different sites that were attacked at the same time, Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, told CNET News.
"It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard," Kelly said. "We're actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can."
Sounds pretty incredible, but the chap himself confirms it on his Twitter account:
да, меня ДДоСили
which roughly means "yup, I was DDoS'd", and he also opines:
this hackers was from Russian KGB
Supporting this view is the fact that his LiveJournal blog is still unreachable.
Fascinating, of course, to see how events in the Caucasus - today's the first anniversary of the ill-advised attack of Georgia on South Ossetia, and Russia's gleeful counter-attack on Georgia - reach and affect even global online worlds like Twitter and Facebook. Interesting times.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter and identi.ca.
*now following cyxymu*
ReplyDeleteThis is a preview of future war, fought against your enemy's technology and hardware -- or access to it -- denying use of your equipment, infrastructure management, and information.
ReplyDeleteMuch cheaper than killing humans, and if the DoS lasts for an extended time, it's a win for the bad guys.
@zaine: yes, I think you're right
ReplyDeleteWell, the name of the town is actually Sukhumi (or Sukhum), not Cyxymu. Name "Cyxymy" just mimics a Cyrillic spelling of the town's real name.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, thanks for point that out.
ReplyDelete