Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Any guesses as to how many more people will start following "Cyxymu" solely because of this attack? It's called The Streisand Effect, Russia, and it's very real.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
So if you ever hear of a simultaneous attack on SlashDot and Twitter... that's aimed at me. See, I have accounts on both sites, so clearly...
Here in capitalist America whole country use Twitter to get informed. In Soviet Russia, Twitter shut down whole country to get informer!
So immediatly following a true DDoS attack on these sites you provide links to them so that they can then be \.'d this...is...awsome.
Some people didn't like what was posted to twitter in the past 24 hours and had other people take it down. It's a distraction. Scrutinize what happened before it down and not the distraction of it going down and you'll have your answer.
Wasn't yesterday the anniversary of the Russian military incursion in South Ossetia in Georgia? Perhaps after Twitter's widespread involvement with the events in Iran, certain political elements didn't want it happening there as well?
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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.
Yesterday, he was the target of a DDoS attack. Today? The target of the Slashdot Effect. Poor guy will never have a functioning social networking page again...
Well, technically they went in after repeatedly telling the Georgians to stop fucking with the south ossetians. Obviously there is more to it than this but for those of us who actually followed the events leading up to the russian forces entering south ossetia it's painfully obvious that most people only noticed something was going on when western media outlets began pumping out "Russia invades Georgia!", "$POLITICIAN says Russian attack on Georgia worse than nazi atrocities" and similar headlines.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
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
Nuclear POWERED, not nuclear ARMED. If you read the source and not the blog refering to the source you'd know this already. "Defense Department officials declined to speculate on which weapons might be aboard the two submarines." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/world/05patrol.html
http://www.worldsoccerbars.com
Odd, CNN had reported they were Akula-Class Attack submarines and specifically pointed out that they did not carry nuclear warheads. I think this article is sensationalizing the fact that they are nuclear-powered by using the more vague term "nuclear-armed" in order to make people think that they're boomers.
If the location of Russian Boomers was world news while on patrol they wouldn't be a show of force they'd be a sign of weakness as the whole point is you have to fear either a first strike without time to respond or a retaliatory strike from a target you can't take out in your first strike because you can't find it.
Knowledge of where that launch platform is (which means you can bet your ass it'd being shadowed by an attack sub of our own) would invalidate the threat.
Well its kind of badass to be the sole purpose some of the world's largest websites got beaten offline.. Aww who am I kidding, the jerk from high school still wins.
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.
They are Akula class attack submarines, which in a war would primarily be used against submarines and ships. They are quite possibly armed with nuclear weapons, but not ICBMS. The big nuclear missiles are on Typhoon class subs that are, presumably, drifting around undetected somewhere in the Barents Sea.
Amen brother! It's saddening how the western media choose to ignore when Georgia started shelling civilian targets in South Ossetia and then launched a full scale invasion. Georgians were preparing for it for 4 years and planned to do it in one day before Russia could interfere. But only when Russia responded a day and a half later did we here about and what we heard was "Russia Invades Georgia!". There are both sides to this story but in this particular case it was Georgia that was the aggressor. And let's not forget history. South Ossetia was given to Georgia by Stalin ( who is Georgian) in the 1950's. Prior to that Ossetia was it's own entity and they and Georgians have a mutual hatred for each other dating back centuries. So when you hear that Georgia "lost it's territories" to Russian "aggression", stop and consider the real facts, not what news media is telling you!
Well, technically they went in after repeatedly telling the Georgians to stop fucking with the south ossetians.
If that's your attitude then I certainly hope that you are in favor of the Taiwanese, Basque, and Tamil Tigers having their independence. South Ossetia was part of Georgia before the Russians went in there and took it away from them. You may regard what they did as justifiable (I honestly don't know enough to form a conclusion one way or another) but it seems dishonest to say that the Georgians were "fucking with" them without also noting that South Ossetia was a part of Georgia.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
because pre-soviet history allows for excusing any crimes russia commits
additionally, america does bad things. therefore, its ok for russia to do bad things
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"america does bad things. therefore, its ok for russia to do bad things"
assume america is the most bloodthirsty, vile evil empire that ever existed in the history of the world
ok
in what way does this validate anything bad russia does?
"well see my neighbor, he stabbed his wife to death. therefore when i cut your arm off, that's excuseable"
very shallow efforts at rationalization, no?
a strong people are a people who can engage in self-criticism and take criticism from others. in fact, this is probably the most effective metric for true strength in the world, on any issue, from individuals to entire nations
so you have criticisms of the usa? good, fine, lets hear them. i welcome your criticisms. the usa is not perfect. i have plenty of problems with american behavior too. i spit on the gw bush administration. i recognize every subject of american aggression you raise in your comment and a whole bunch more you didn't mention
and now, guess what... its your turn. let us hear YOU criticize russia. let us hear you address my criticisms of russia. directly, rather than deflecting my words back emptily: "well, america is bad too, so you can't criticize"
what is this, kindergarten? are you 5 years old?
is it impossible for a russian to self-criticize or hear criticism of russia?
do you think this is a sign of strength on your part?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I would go even further - the logic exposed by the grand-parent can be used to justify the liberation of Chechnya, since it's population is clearly being oppressed by Russia, including killing of tens of thousands of Chechnya's residents and the installation of a murderous (just recently another journalist critical of the government was murdered) and oppressive puppet-government.
"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?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
That's rather like studying Scientology from L. Ron Hubbards perspective.