Is Twitter Under Attack from Russia?
Twitter continues to be flaky today. Par for the course on the overcrowded microblogging service, right? But Twitter claims it is the victim of elaborate hack attacks that "appear to have been geopolitical in motivation." That's actually true!
In a blog post, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone writes that the attacks are ongoing and "massively coordinated," but declined to elaborate, because then he'd have to kill you. Actually no, it's because he didn't want to "engage in speculative discussion." But a Georgian blogger is happy to speculate; he says it's totally the Russian regime.
The blogger, known as "Cyxymu," has been outspoken in his criticism of Russian tactics in the war over the disputed region of South Ossetia. Facebook's chief of security tells CNET (via Business Insider) that Cyxymu is the target of the denial of service attack on Facebook and Twitter yesterday and today. The blogger has accounts on both services, as well as on LiveJournal, Blogger and YouTube. Google, which operates the latter two, told CNET its systems "prevented substantive impact to our services," so we still have the keyboard cat.
First the subs off our coast, now Twitter attacks. How will the Russians vaguely annoy us next? Satellite TV jamming? Attack the iPhone app store?