Cyxymu: Russian Government Responsible for Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal Attacks
Right now, it clearly looks like yesterday's attacks against Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal were meant to target only one user - a pro-Georgian blogger knows as Cyxymu. What isn't clear yet, however, is who was actually behind these attacks. Assuming these attacks were politically motivated and really only meant to silence or intimidate Cyxymu, then they obviously failed spectacularly.
Guardian Interview with Cyxymu
After all, did you know who Cyxymu was when you woke up yesterday? Speaking to the Guardian earlier today, Cyxymu argued that the Russian government was directly responsible for these attacks against him, though while this makes for a good headline, chances are that the reality is far more prosaic.
Cyxymu on the Net: A Digital Refugee
These attacks, which affected some of the Internet's most popular sites, seem oddly out of proportion. On Twitter, Cyxymu had only about 600 friends earlier today - though that number is now up over 800 and growing as his name becomes more widely known. His main LiveJournal account only got between 1000 and 1500 unique visitors per day over the last few months (though Cyxymu moved from service to service, so it's hard to pinpoint exact numbers).
Evgeny Morozov currently offers the best discussion of who Cyxymu is and why he might have been the target of this attack. You can find his post on the Foreign Policy magazine's Net Effect blog (it's a long read, but worth it). Morozov describes Cyxymu as the first "digital refugee," who had already faced DDOS attacks on his LiveJournal and Wordpress.com blog last year. Morozov discounts the idea that Cyxymu will mostly profit from these attacks thanks to the Streisand effect and that his message will now be heard by far more people than before the attacks. We are not quite sure about that, however, especially given that Cyxymu has started to give media interviews now.
Was the Kremlin Behind these Attacks?
Given that Cyxymu already faced similar attacks in the past, it only makes sense to assume that these new attacks were also meant to silence or intimidate him (though clearly this never worked before). We do wonder, however, if this was really an attack launched by the Russian government. While the results of the attack were far-reaching, DDOS attacks are sadly nothing unusual on the net - and sometimes they are even used as a way to extort money from online businesses. It doesn't take a government to start a DDOS attack, and lots of spammers and hackers probably have the ability to launch an attack of this scale.
In his Guardian interview, Cyxymu says that the attack may have been "carried out by ordinary hackers but I'm certain the order came from the Russian government." Indeed, this is a possibility and it's still too early to really know. For the time being, though, we are not fully convinced yet that a government organization was really behind this attack.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
What a bizarre story. Doesn't really make sense to me. Perhaps the situation with Georgia is more significant than people generally realize? But why draw so much attention to someone you want to silence?
"though while this makes for a good headline, chances are that the reality is far more prosaic." Though apparently you have no qualms about making that inflammatory implication in your own headline? I dislike the trolls that complain about your content as much as the next person, but in my opinion headlines like this make it harder to argue that blogs have the same professionalism as traditional media.
"headlines like this make it harder to argue that blogs have the same professionalism as traditional media" - personally, i find the incessant arguments that aim to substantiate the so-called professional merit or value of blogs rather tiresome. blogs are NOT traditional media. can we just get over that and move on?
to me, if crafted with equal intent to both provide facts and formulate opinion, then i see blogs as an evolved form of journalistic (albeit editorialized) reporting. but does it make less it professional? are the majority of people's opinions REALLY going to be swayed because a given style of reporting takes a stab at spinning, hyping, deflating, demystifying, exposing, debunking, etc.?
btw - i thought it was clever (if not sarcastic) that the author used that so-called "inflammatory implication" as the headline. a bit tongue-in-cheek i thought.
The blog is still down, I find the story hard to believe though, first time I hear about him, what so important and frightening he has to say anyways ? You can much easier cut his E-access or reroute his traffic so he believes he writes and posts but his posts remain on the local network.
This is pathetic.
I mean - WTF - Do you really think that everything had happened because of this Cyxymu douche?
As far as I know it's easier and more effective to put a key-logger and delete an account "normally" than to execute DDoS attack of this scale and think that everything had happened because of a single user...
@Anthony - the headline simply cites Cyxumu's own allegations. As you can see from the post, I'm not quite sure I buy Cyxumu's theory that a government agency is behind this,
To be honest, I'm not even 100% convinced yet that attacking Cyxumu was the ultimate goal of this attack. I'd like to see more evidence for this, but for the time being, it does seem like a reasonable explanation (though, with enough time, we could probably all think of hundreds of other theories).
@Rob - I agree that the means seem out of proportion. I do wonder, however, if somebody who already controls a botnet couldn't unleash an attack with just a few keystrokes.
If it wasn't August, i would say this is a good April fool, if Great Russia really wants to shut that guy up, they will do it for real, not by attacking websites.
And if a Government would do that, i was expecting Iran to do it to Twitter.com to stop it from publishing Iranian sufferings during the presidential elections.
Anyway the guy now got the spotlight.... oh well i hate these paranoid people who lives in the conspiracy theory !!
It is more possible that Aliens united with inverted vampires organized ddos attack than Russian government. One, anti-russian bloger says: "It is because of me!" and all western media believes him.
It isn't Russian way. Rob is right. Look at Suhumi's twitter account. In 8 months he had only 30+ updates. That's not the threat for me.
I don't know how it is called, but there's name for that condition. A condition when someone thinks that whole world revolves around him.
Russian government have bigger problems.
I'm curios that no one connected this attack with earlier one that N.Korea is accused for.
Maybe one of the break off Russian states could be behind a DDOS just to get some attention. There are enough crazy people in the world that would try something like that. But I highly doubt they would do it solely to get at Cyxymu. That's a little too Hollywood make-believe.
I do not understand the point of attacking social media to silence one user. It is unlikely they will perminatlly bring down site and really they just cause the Streisand Effect by causing such a disruption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Don't make sense at all....Need to prepare against these attacks in the future if at all possible...
Tony
I totally agree, the Russian government is behind the attack. Putin nor Medvedev want the world to learn about Russian aggression in Georgia.
http://www.mishabirman.com/blog