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.
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!
"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
Still to black and white. There isn't a "right" and a "wrong" side in every issue. You can bet your ass though, that there are always multiple political sides to every issue, all of which are probably "wrong".
If you cannot condemn American actions when they are obviously done for selfish reasons (operation Ajax?) then you can't condemn Russian actions when they are done for what you consider to be selfish reasons.
Georgia being under discussion here, it is easy to compare Russian intervention on behalf of ethnic Russians (many of whom carried dual citizenship, by the way) to the United States intervention in Beirut City in 1978 to rescue American nationals. We didn't want to see Americans killed in 78, Russia didn't want to see Russians killed last year. Same-o same-o.
Maybe not pertinent to this conversation, I was awarded my first Humanitarian Service Award for participating in the evacuation of Beirut. Maybe that helps understand my perspective, maybe not. But, I can see right and wrong on the part of the Russians, just as I can see right and wrong on our part. We ain't lily-white, and they ain't deep-space black.
"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