Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal attacked to silence a single Georgian

Cyxymu, a province in the Republic of Georgia (not the U.S. state), is also the account name of a blogger hackers allegedly targeted in the DoS attack experienced around the globe yesterday, with some residual latency today.

Cyxymu had accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Google’s Blogger, and YouTube, which led Max Kelly, Facebook’s Chief Security Officer, to the conclusion that “[i]t was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard.”

It sounds like a radical step to attack global social-networking sites to bring down one specific user, but DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) battles between Georgia and Russia were prevalent last year, often using simple flood scripts to infiltrate and decommission global sites. The hackers basically want to silence the pro-Georgia blogger any way they can.

The malicious party also spoofed Cyxymu’s email, spewing spam from his very own account. An apology message was posted on his LiveJournal page reflecting on the email defilement, also adding “[n]ow it’s obvious it’s a special attack against me and Georgians.”