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.

Nashi?

[RbF_Mack]

There has been numerous DDOS attacks over the years by Russia's youth group the "Nashi" but mainly against the ukraine. I'm sure in a year or so when the media dies down some crazy Putin funded mother Russia group will come out and admit to it.

Re:Just like rs79 said yesterday

[mikael_j]

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

Re:Asymmetrical warfare

[Toe, The]

On Twitter, he was under 400 when this article was published. Now he's at 447. Now, 449 since I started typing.

Have a look to see what he's at now: http://twitter.com/cyxymu [twitter.com]

P.S. Some of it is in English.

Re:1-Year Anniversay of Russian Invasion of Georgi

[TMarvelous]

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 [nytimes.com]

Re:1-Year Anniversay of Russian Invasion of Georgi

[kevinNCSU]

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.

Re:1-Year Anniversay of Russian Invasion of Georgi

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

They are Akula class [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org] that are, presumably, drifting around undetected somewhere in the Barents Sea.

Re:Just like rs79 said yesterday

[toporok]

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!

Re:Just like rs79 said yesterday

[Shakrai]

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.

Re:how would you react

[Runaway1956]

You really should study Russian history, from the Russian perspective. For starters, can you tell us, without googling, how many times Russia has been invaded in the past? Invaded, and defeated, it's people enslaved, murdered, and starved? In fact, starvation in Russia is an ever present spectre - America's spendthrift and wasteful habits combined with American attitudes about freedom and liberty would be fatal to the Russian people.

Here's a stratfor link, from which you might browse around, and glean additional intelligence:
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090602_geography_recession [stratfor.com]

Re:The only one?

[pdboddy]

He was identified by a Facebook admin. He's an outspoken blogger about the whole Georgian conflict, and the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Georgia just passed. If someone isn't trying to shut him up (Russia, hackers annoyed by his shit, etc), then someone decided he'd be a good test of their latest botnet.

Re:1-Year Anniversay of Russian Invasion of Georgi

[robinsonne]

The reason there are so many Russian citizens in South Ossetia is because when the region became semi-autonomous prior to the conflict, Russia granted the South Ossetians Russian citizenship.

Re:Just like rs79 said yesterday

[Runaway1956]

If we use the word "Ossetian" to signify an ethnic group, yes, you are right. If we use the word to signify the residents of the region, you are only partly right.

Try this site: http://ossetians.com/eng/ [ossetians.com] Browse around. Look at the number of Russian army generals, and later, the number of "Heros of the Soviet". Whether we are discussing the ethnic group, or the territory, Ossetians have a long and rich relationship with Russia.

Be sure to hit some of the links on this page: http://ossetians.com/eng/index.php?showcat=jump&f=38 [ossetians.com]

Re:Just like rs79 said yesterday

[Aceticon]

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.