DDoS attacks aimed at blogger
Massive distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks intended to silence a blogger known as “Cyxymu” hammered Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and even YouTube, F-Secure researcher Mikko Hyponnen said in a message at the firm’s website.
“Launching DDoS attacks against services like Facebook is the equivalent of bombing a TV station because you don’t like one of the newscasters,” Hyponnen wrote.
“The amount of collateral damage is huge. Millions of users of Twitter, LiveJournal, and Facebook have been experiencing problems because of this attack.”
Facebook reported on Friday that it had isolated the trouble and service for its more than 250 million users had returned to normal.
Cyxymu pages at Facebook and LiveJournal were targeted in the cyber assault, according to the Palo Alto, California-based social-networking hotspot.
“Yesterday’s attack appears to be directed at an individual who has a presence on a number of sites, rather than the sites themselves,” Facebook said in a release.
“Specifically, the person is an activist blogger and a botnet was directed to request his pages at such a rate that it impacted service for other users.”
Internet security specialists say the source of the attacks may never be determined with certainty if no one claims responsibility.
“Whoever is behind this attack, they had significant bandwidth available,” Hyponnen said.
“Our best guess is that these attacks were done by nationalistic Russian hackers who wanted to silence a visible online opponent.”
In “tweets” at popular micro-blogging service Twitter, Cyxymu blames Russian authorities out to stifle his online commentary.
The attacks may have had the opposite effect, with the number of people signed on to follow Cyxymu tweets more than quadrupling to 1 437 in the wake of the cyber assaults.
“My twitter is online!” a tweet proclaimed on Friday at the Twitter page of Cyxymu, who listed his location as Tbilisi. “Thank you all for support after ciber (sic) attack from Russia!”
Twitter was down for more than an hour early on Thursday and service at the eponymous California firm’s website has continued to be sporadic.
“The ongoing, massively coordinated attacks on Twitter this week appear to have been geopolitical in motivation,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an email reply to an AFP inquiry.
“However, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to engage in speculative discussion about these motivations.”
Twitter and Facebook have teamed with US internet powerhouse Google to investigate the attacks.
Google owns online video-sharing website YouTube and a Blogger service that were reportedly hit by cyber attacks.
Mountain View, California-based Google deflected the assaults and “prevented substantive impact to our services,” a company spokesperson said.
Classic DDoS attacks involve legions of zombie computers, machines infected with viruses, which are commanded to simultaneously visit a website.
Such a massive onslaught of demand can overwhelm website computer servers, slowing service or knocking it offline.
An everyday chatting tool for many, Twitter has also become a weapon for dissidents to circumvent censorship in places where freedom of speech is suppressed.
“The open exchange of information can have a positive impact globally and our job is to keep Twitter services running reliably to the best of our ability,” Stone said.
DDoS attacks – what can be done?
Loading ...