Twitter, Facebook DDoS Attack Targeted One User

An anonymous reader writes "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 yesterday's site-wide outage at Twitter and problems at the other sites on, 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." Here are user Cyxymu's LiveJournal Google cache and LiveJournal account (unreachable at this writing). Larry Magid writes on CNet that this individual blogs about independence of a breakaway region of Georgia. Macworld has some speculation in other directions on the motivations behind the DDoS attack.
Update: 08/07 19:52 GMT by KD : Cyber attacks on Cyxymu are not new. For over a year Evgeny Morozov has been calling attention to him as the first digital refugee.

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1-Year Anniversay of Russian Invasion of Georgia

[reporter]

According to a report by the "Times Online" and another report by "guardian.co.uk", today is the 1-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Georgia. Russian troops has not exited the territory of Georgia though Vladimir Putin signed an agreement to do so. Further, the Kremlin has recognized the occupied territory -- Abkhazia and South Ossetia -- as independent nations although the entire family of Western nations has not.

The coordinated Internet attack against a computer account owned by a Georgian is likely not a coincidence as the attack occurred precisely on the day marking the 1-year anniversary of this show of Russian military force. For that same reason, that a pair of Russian submarines loaded with nuclear missiles were recently patrolling off the East Coast of the United States is not a coincidence.

It also targeted Iranian reformist accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the list of active Iranian opposition to coup government that got attacked yesterday as well:
http://www.facebook.com/mousavi
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Zahra-Rahnavard-/79757303129
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Mirdamadi-/129589377387
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Abdollah-Ramezanzadeh/104800577446
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Behzad-Nabavi-/112121917445

source of list: http://iran.whyweprotest.net/news-current-events/27068-mousavis-facebook-deleted-4.html#post60410

Re:The only one?

[eln]

Apparently Facebook's security officer identified this particular account as the target. I haven't seen any discussion as to what evidence he's basing that on, but I'm guessing he didn't just pick a random account out of the air.

Re:your thinking is so pathetic

[Runaway1956]

"basically what you are saying is "russia doesn't have to be accountable for anything bad it ever did, because somebody, somewhere else, did something bad once""

Bullshit. This is not what I said.

"no, idiot: america does plenty of bad things. russia does plenty of bad things. you admit to them."

When? Taking operation Ajax, for example, when has the US ever said, "Hey, Iran, we're sorry for fucking your lives up - how can we help make things right?" President Obama sort of hinted at a near apology, recently. As a rule, the US does NOT admit to anything, period.

The Katyn massacre? I fail to see exactly how the actions of the Soviet relate to actions by today's Russia relate, exactly. The Soviet failed, remember? It crumbled, it's gone. Nowhere, in all my writings and ramblings have I EVER defended the Soviet, or any of it's actions that tended to subjugate people. Murder is murder, yes, but can you point to instances of murder commited by today's Russia?

"you don't have any intellectual honesty"

You, on the other hand, don't have any honesty at all, intellectual or otherwise, to take my statements, and read into them all that you have read into them.

"i have a job for you to do: criticize russia. criticize something bad it did. you will find out an amazing thing: you can still criticize the usa after you do that. that you can criticize BOTH the usa and russia"

Wake up, dude. You will find that the vast majority of Americans simply accept that America is good, and Russia is evil. Most of those Americans have no concept of what Russia is.

You want me to criticize Russia and it's people? Easy. There are thousands of instances of criminally insane actions committed by the Soviet, beginning with genocidal purges within Russia, purges of the intelligentsia within Russia, and political purges within Russia. The Katyn massacre that you refer to was "business as usual" for the Soviet. It was no more, and no less, horrible than sending millions of people into exile in Siberia for offenses ranging from petty theft, to being descended from royalty, to voicing an opinion, or even hoarding bread crusts bought on the black market.

I'm aware of wrongs commited by Russians, at least as much as I'm aware of American wrongs. After all, they are trumpeted far and wide by our media. It's the wrongs that we try to cover up that concern me more.

I thank you for your rant, though. Obviously, I got under your skin. Now - do you even understand what Operation Ajax was all about, and what the consequences were? How about the Bay of Pigs fiasco? And, the CIA's operation with a shot up boat that got us involved in Vietnam? How many of our own sins are you aware of, and willing to admit guilt for?