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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“The amount of collateral damage is huge. Millions of users of Twitter, LiveJournal, and Facebook have been experiencing problems because of this attack.”<\/p>\n
Facebook reported on Friday that it had isolated the trouble and service for its more than 250 million users had returned to normal.<\/p>\n
Cyxymu pages at Facebook and LiveJournal were targeted in the cyber assault, according to the Palo Alto, California-based social-networking hotspot.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Internet security specialists say the source of the attacks may never be determined with certainty if no one claims responsibility.<\/p>\n
“Whoever is behind this attack, they had significant bandwidth available,” Hyponnen said.<\/p>\n
“Our best guess is that these attacks were done by nationalistic Russian hackers who wanted to silence a visible online opponent.”<\/p>\n
In “tweets” at popular micro-blogging service Twitter, Cyxymu blames Russian authorities out to stifle his online commentary.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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!”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“However, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to engage in speculative discussion about these motivations.”<\/p>\n
Twitter and Facebook have teamed with US internet powerhouse Google to investigate the attacks.<\/p>\n
Google owns online video-sharing website YouTube and a Blogger service that were reportedly hit by cyber attacks.<\/p>\n
Mountain View, California-based Google deflected the assaults and “prevented substantive impact to our services,” a company spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Classic DDoS attacks involve legions of zombie computers, machines infected with viruses, which are commanded to simultaneously visit a website.<\/p>\n
Such a massive onslaught of demand can overwhelm website computer servers, slowing service or knocking it offline.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n