Twitter and Facebook taken down by the Russians?

Twitter and Facebook taken down by the Russians?

www.pcpro.co.uk

The denial-of-service attack that hit both Twitter and Facebook is thought to have been caused by an orchestrated attack on one Georgian blogger.

Twitter was knocked offline for several hours on Thursday, while Facebook and blogging service LiveJournal were also affected.

All of the attacks were targeting a single user of the services, that of anti-Russia blogger, Cyxymu (the name of a town in Georgia). The attacks came a year to the day since Georgian troops moved into South Ossetia, sparking a conflict with Russia.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Funnily enough I was thinking exactly the same when I heard about this..... and this would be considered a favour to the Iranian regime if the Russian's or even Chinese did this.

It doesn't matter too much though as Iranian's could use another website instead. It's just that Twitter was the best and most accessible one to them, but there are always other means that can still do the job of getting out information. Unless every site gets taken down, but that's hardly likely.

I don't see how this would benefit Russia too much if they wanted to invade somebody (Georgia? Ukraine?) now, but anything is possible, and cyberwars are probably going to precede invasions in future. But this is highly unlikely.

Just checked and Facebook homepage works, but Twitter still down. Oh dear no more Tweets!

The only people this could possibly affect badly are Iranian protestors, and those who get the protestor information through Twitter. Everyone else will be saved time they might otherwise have wasted, and it might even improve productivity in the workplace!

www.pcpro.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Wow, ever hear of framing? It would be an insult to think Russians are that stupid to hack a major website just to obviously destroy one anti-Russian activists words. If this is the case, then it's probably not government related.

I don't see how an attack against a blogger in Georgia would take down either Twitter or Facebook, much less both.

I doubt very much that any DOS attack on either site would be traceable. Generally the attacks are committed by a large number of "zombie" computers that have been taken over by some cracker. This is called a *distributed* denial of service attack (DDoS). That person orders the computers to start requesting pages from the same site, so it gets hit by thousands or even millions of page requests per second. That's enough to bring just about any server to its knees. However, if you trace back, all you find are the zombies, not the cracker.

So, while I can understand why a Russian cracker might want to attack a Georgian blogger, and why any cracker might want to bring Twitter and Facebook down, I can't see where there is any connection between the two incidents.

I stand corrected.

This is an attack.

DDoS is so 90's and easy to prevent though.

It's sad.

[edit on 7-8-2009 by crisko]

[edit on 7-8-2009 by crisko]

Originally posted by chiron613
I don't see how an attack against a blogger in Georgia would take down either Twitter or Facebook, much less both.

I doubt very much that any DOS attack on either site would be traceable. Generally the attacks are committed by a large number of "zombie" computers that have been taken over by some cracker. This is called a *distributed* denial of service attack (DDoS). That person orders the computers to start requesting pages from the same site, so it gets hit by thousands or even millions of page requests per second. That's enough to bring just about any server to its knees. However, if you trace back, all you find are the zombies, not the cracker.

So, while I can understand why a Russian cracker might want to attack a Georgian blogger, and why any cracker might want to bring Twitter and Facebook down, I can't see where there is any connection between the two incidents.

The perps are discovered by undercover agents who have a rather easy time infiltrating cracker groups. It's also likely that undecipherable packets coming from someone's system are assumed to be malicious in purpose. When one users sends out too many such suspicious packets, a red flag is raised somewhere.


[edit on 7-8-2009 by vcwxvwligen]

Originally posted by crisko
As a regional director for Verizon, no.

One user does not have the ability to conduct such an attack. It's like trying to empty the ocean one bucket at a time.

Network segment downtime is all.

These botnets can have millions of nodes. They also rent out CPU cycles to organized crime groups and even intelligence agencies, as if they actually owned the machines. My hunch is that when someone makes too much money renting CPU cycles, they get framed for some crime and then thrown in jail.

This is why it's crucial to use good anti-virus software on your own computer, and update frequently!! There are still computers out there running XP service pack 2 !!

reply to post by vcwxvwligen


I corrected my original post.

When I woke up this morning my inbox was full - mostly about this and what we are doing about it, which isn't much. Most of the threats I deal with come from China.

A bit of side info; when MCI World Comm collapsed, Verizon took over the global operations. I deal with traffic coming from East Asia and the West Coast (most of it passes through Guam).

If it is a botnet; there are steps that can be taken to shut it down at the Tier 1 level - I won't say what they are. If it is coming from a specific country (aka Russia) - there isn't really much that can be done due to net neutrality. Sure, we could shut down all traffic coming from that area - but there would be a lot of collateral damage - think 4chan but worse.

Be advised - sometime next year, YOU, the user will be liable for any damages your computer(s) cause should they be a part of such an attack.

EDIT: If you are tech savy and have a beefy machine - I highly suggest installing Ubuntu desktop and running Windows in a virtual machine. This is the safest way to traverse the internet these days.

Also, debian based servers seem to be the most resiliant when it comes to dealing with China.





[edit on 7-8-2009 by crisko]