Network Security News

Georgian blogger 'Cyxymu' target of DDoS attacks

Monday, August 10, 2009

The distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) targeting Twitter, Facebook and other websites on Thursday were directed by Russian hackers at a Georgian blogger with the nickname Cyxymu, according to reports.

The blogger had been posting accounts of events leading to the conflict between Russia and Georgia last August to his blog and linked through Twitter and other social networks, he told the New York Times.

Attackers also bombarded email inboxes with spam that appeared to come from the Gmail email address of the blogger, in order to intimidate him and show him that he was the target of the attacks, according to the Avert Labs blog of web security firm McAfee.

By Friday, Twitter was back online after suffering a second wave of attacks. Cyxymu posted a message on his Twitter page that said: "My twitter is online! Thank you all for support after ciber [sic] attack from Russia!"

PC World reported that Twitter continued to experience DDoS attacks on Friday and into Saturday, but the company set up defenses to block the excess traffic.

A DDoS attack uses networks of malware-infected PCs, called botnets, to overwhelm a website with traffic. Similar cyberattacks occurred in early June that knocked out government websites in the U.S. and South Korea.