Russia Attacks Facebook, Twitter
& Google Over Georgian Blogger

Pro-Russian hackers - who some believe to be Kremlin-backed - have hacked Facebook, LiveJournal, Twitter and Google in retaliation for a pro-Georgian blogger having accounts on all of those sites. Giorgi, who blogs under the screen name 'Cyxymu', has been a relative low-key blogger up to now, but has posted many blogs castigating the Putin-Medvedev regime for their part in the Russian-Georgian war last year. It is believed that a highly professional and highly organised attack was made, with many people involved, because it brought about the complete crashing of Twitter for a couple of hours, and Facebook and Google both suffered serious problems for hours too. If rumours and assumptions about Russian government involvement are correct, why would Russia attack this little-known blogger in particular? Was it just a show of strength to the big online companies? And are we to expect more of these attacks?

August.12.2009 - George Valentine Corr, Blatant News Editor
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WHO IS CYXYMU?
There is an interesting article in The Independent which claims to be the first ever face-to-face interview with the mysterious Giorgi, who operates under the Cyxymu name whilst blogging online, but he has also appeared as an interviewee in many other media outlets over the past few days too. He is painted as a shy man who wants to remain concealed, but there is some conflicting evidence about this. Along with spending considerable time talking to media outlets - his many interviews show this and that Independent article mentions him greeting the reporter with "It's crazy. I was on the phone the whole day. I'm very tired" - these outlets are revealing a lot of personal information about him. The aforementioned Independent article will tell you that he is a 34 year old "slightly bookish" economics lecturer who has a wife and kids. It also tells us that he is an ethnic-Georgian who used to live in Abkhazia until the 1993 victory by Abkhazian separatists over the Georgian military. This seems like ample information for the likes of the Russian Secret Service to go find him with, but even more worrying, there is enough information in that description for him to be publicly outed on the net. If he preferred not to have this information shared, then shame on the press for doing so. It wasn't necessary. But maybe this is a stage-managed drama, already pre-planned for some unknown purposes, because it does very little to help the Russians bury the war under the carpet, which you would automatically believe to be their goal.

THE RUSSIAN CYBER ATTACKS ON CYXYMU
It may not be proved whether the Russian government was behind this attack on the four internet giants - Facebook, LiveJournal, Twitter and Google - and this one minor blogger, but it could be assumed that it was done by pro-Russian people or persons. The one year anniversary of the war was to be marked by a new blog by Cyxymu, but as he was trying to add this blog, all of the sites he connected to were attacked by a denial-of-service (DOS) attack which flooded these huge sites with tons of requests. It made the most impact on Twitter, nobody in the world could connect to the site for hours. Experts reckon that it would have taken a lot of people to be able to carry out such a prolonged attack on such big servers, therefore making the involvement of a government agency a distinct possibility, and Giorgi himself believes that it could not have been done by even a handful of hackers, expressing that it would have taken a team of professionals. He was previously attacked one time last year. In October 2008 his LiveJournal blog account was hacked and only began to function again in May of this year, and the same site is still having problems with this months attack, with LiveJournal visitors still suffering some problems days later. For some reason that site seems particularly vulnerable to whoever is doing this.

WHATS GOING ON?
Personally I believe that it was either the Russian administration who done this, or who sanctioned it, but it mystifies me as to what they will achieve from it. Giorgi had 2,000 subscribers, mainly Georgian, and was well-known in his countries blogging circles, but was a 100% unknown outside of that. Now he is know by tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people all over the world. Giorgi's Cyxymu blog is busier than ever and now the world is aware that it is one year since the war. You would think that the Russians would be deeply unhappy with that outcome, but maybe this suits them? They may be warning all of the big internet companies of what they may do to dissenting voices, or maybe this is a prelude to the superpowers beginning to attack sites who offer opposing voices, because China, the US and Israel are particularly known for such actions in recent years. One striking thing is that these were all important American companies, with public affection in great supply, so would Russia have to get these large-scale attacks sanctioned with the White House behind the scenes? It is possible. Or maybe Russia is gesturing against the US administration whilst we are in this uncertain time for the world - whilst the US is struggling to find it's feet and the Asian powers are finding theirs more and more. Giorgi may only be a pawn in this latest drama, either unwittingly or knowingly, but the real concern is not this chapter, but what comes next.

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