

Twitter, Facebook attack targeted one user  - mjfern
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10305200-245.html

======
tlrobinson
_"It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to
keep his voice from being heard,"_

I never would have heard of this guy were it not for this DDoS attack that
attempted to silence him. Streisand effect strikes again. When will people
learn.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Maybe Cyxymu orchestrated it him- or herself to gain some notoriety. :)

~~~
Timothee
If the attacks against Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal were actually
directed at his account, that he did it himself is the only thing that would
make sense to me. The DoS couldn't just last forever and why would one bring 3
websites down rather than just do something to his internet connection?

When you manage to do what happened today, I suppose it's not really much
harder to do that instead.

------
hristov
What a load of s*%&$. Was he the only pro Georgian blogger out there? Why go
through all this to target him when I am sure there are thousands of pro
Georgian websites and blogs all over the place. For example, why not attack
the white house website:

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Vice-President-Biden-
Reaffirm...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Vice-President-Biden-Reaffirms-
Support-for-Georgia/)

Or any of the major US news websites which are all quite pro-Georgian.

So by going through all this trouble to silence this particular blogger the
evil FSB is not removing much pro Georgian info from the net at all, as there
are many much more popular sources of pro Georgian information that are still
online. Also, what the hell were the evil FSB trying to acomplish anyways. I
mean, they know those websites will resume in a couple of hours after the
attacks. Was it so important to silence that guy for several hours?

Oh, and let's not pretend that having an accounts on Facebook, Twitter,
Livejournal and Google blogs is something unique, I guarantee you thousands of
people have all these accounts.

But don't mind this - when in doubt blame the FSB. Now it is no surprise that
that particular blogger has floated the FSB theory, he just wants to be
famous. Maybe he is paranoid enough to believe this story but that does not
mean we should. But it is rather amazing how quickly any bizarre and paranoid
evil-russia-behind-the-scenes theory gets picked up by major newspapers.

~~~
pesho
My point exactly! It is plain ludicrous to think that the imperialistic
ambitions-driven Russian government would flood Livejournal, Twitter and
Facebook just to silence that one guy. I mean, in the end, these are the same
media that Russian bloggers use to state their anti-Georgian opinions. It was
either a lets-see-what-will-happen DDoS or this guy indeed orchestrated it to
gain some popularity.

------
idlewords
It's not "Cyxymu", it's Sukhumi. Someone at CNET couldn't be bothered to
notice that the article is in Cyrillic.

~~~
zngtk4
No, actually, the livejournal account is literally "cyxymu". The word is best
written as Sukhumi (the Georgian city), but the cnet article refers to the
"account name" and so is completely accurate.

------
mixmax
So who is this Cyxymu and what are his (or her) political goals? That seems to
be the key to finding out who might be behind it.

~~~
mixmax
From this article
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/07/twitter_attack_theor...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/07/twitter_attack_theory/)

 _"a single user who vocally supports the Republic of Georgia."_

I just submitted the article which also has a possible explanation as to ow
the attack was carried out.

~~~
brown9-2
_"This was not like a botnet-style DDoS," Woodcock told The Register. "This
was a joejob where people were just clicking on links in email and the people
clicking on the links were not malefactors. They were just the sort of idiots
that click on links in email without knowing what they are." Joejobs are spam
messages that are designed not to push Viagra but to induce someone to click
on a link in the hopes of harming the site being linked to._

Seriously, people following links in spam messages could cause enough traffic
to flood Facebook and/or Twitter? That sounds a little hard to believe that
THAT much traffic could be generated by people suckered by spam, let alone
that the level of traffic would be sustainable.

~~~
Devilboy
4chan and other popular social sites sometimes manage to organize such
'manual' DDOS attacks

~~~
jonny_noog
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan#Internet_attacks>

------
Chuancy
Chinese Twitter users who viewed as dissents also experienced false complaint
and attacks similar to this lately, possibly by Chinese crackers hired by the
gov.

