The Twitter attack blame game begins
August 7th, 2009 by Lloyd Gofton
So, yesterday afternoon Twitter went down, and if the most recent stories flying around the web are to be believed, it’s the work of the Russians. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be blaming the country as a whole, the Government, armed forces, individuals, but the finger is being pointed at ‘The Russians’ for this massive denial of service attack that affected Twitter, Facebook, and also targeted LiveJournal and YouTube via Google.
In a throw back to the cold war, it seems the hackers may have been trying to silence a pro-Georgian blogger by overwhelming the websites he used to communicate with sympathisers on the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Georgia.
I’m sorry, is this actually for real? Or is it simply a stunt by the BBC to publicise the next series of Spooks. Seriously, this sounds like a great episode where geeky IT boy Malcolm, who occasionally saves the day, will again get his one episode of note per series before drifting into the background and getting shouted at to track mobile signals or rewire an RFID tag to disarm a chemical weapon…oh sorry, that’s episode two.
Anyway, before I waffle on, let me get to some sort of point. It’s not that I don’t believe such an attack is possible, of course it is and ultimately somebody has done it, but why do it to stop a blogger from reaching his community, when the ultimate outcome will be to bring more attention to said blogger that you were trying to block? Ahhh, but maybe it’s a double bluff, and it was actually….oh never mind, there are only so many conspiracy theories I can deal with on a Friday afternoon.
Dissecting the various articles that have been published to date, the main evidence seems to be as follows:
- The co-ordinated cyber assaults shut down Twitter for a couple of hours and disrupted access for Facebook users
- LiveJournal was also hit while Google managed to fend off “denial-of-service” attacks
- Georgia and Russia today mark a year since the outbreak of their war
- A Georgian blogger by the name of Cyxymu has accounts on all the websites and was the target, according to Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook (BTW: according to the Guardian Cyxymu’s name is styled after the Cyrillic name for the disputed Black Sea city of Sukhumi, and the blog is written in Georgianised Russian.)
- Security experts believe the attack originated from Russia
I’m no legal expert, but if that was the evidence against me in a court case, I’d be pretty relaxed waiting for the verdict.
My favourite quote from this story goes to Graham Cluley, from Sophos, who when explaining the technical elements of the cyber attack, said:”A denial-of-service attack occurs when computers bombard a website with requests for information.
“Typically hackers can control thousands of innocent users’ computers centrally and command them to visit a site that they wish to flood with traffic, making it impossible for other internet users to get through.
“It’s a bit like 15 fat men trying to get through a revolving door at the same time - nothing can move. In the meantime, micro-bloggers around the world are likely to be left twiddling their thumbs.”
15 fat men in a revolving door - beautiful.
Oh and finally, I’m still having problems with Twitter, so if we can sort that out soonish it would be much appreciated.
For further information on this check out the articles in The Times, Telegraph, Guardian, and The Register.
Tags: denial of service, facebook, russians, Twitter attack
