ReadWriteWeb

When first Egypt, then Libya, shut down their entire country's Internet, it was big news. These acts, along with various national cyber-attacks, reminded us how fragile our connection to the Web can be.

But I don't think anyone anticipated that one retired lady with a garden trowel could shut down the Internet for a whole country. But that's exactly what happened to Armenia.

Twitter went down last week. So did Facebook, LiveJournal, and Blogger.

They were all victims of a denial of service attack that was, depending on who you believe, either the work of Russian nationalist hackers targeting a Georgian economist, a clever ploy by the United Economists of Georgia to garner sympathy by feigning an attack by Russian nationalist hackers, or an attempt by Paramount Pictures to divert attention from reviews of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

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.