Twitter and Facebook cyber-attack 'aimed at lone Georgian blogger' | Mail OnlineA cyber attack that caused misery for millions of Facebook and Twitter users may have been a deliberate attempt to silence just one activist blogger, it was claimed tonight.
The 'massively coordinated attack' - which caused chaos across the worldwide web - was thought to have originated from Russia.
Their apparent aims was to block a pro-Georgian blogger posting his thoughts on the first anniversary of the start of last year's five-day war between Russia and Georgia.
The attack spread through popular websites such as Facebook, micro-blogging site Twitter and Google, causing chaos on Wednesday.
Today, security experts at Facebook claimed the online campaign targeted just one person, a Georgian blogger going by the name of Cyxymu.
But others said the assault could have been a test run for blackmail attempts or even extortion.
The co-ordinated cyber assault caused disruptions to Facebook and managed to shut down Twitter for a couple of hours for its army of 3 million Uk subcribers
Google managed to stop the 'denial of service' campaign, but another site, LiveJournal was also affected
The hacking technique works by making thousands of attempts from an army of infected computers to contact a single site at the same time.
A Russian tank rolls past a house set on fire by South Ossetian militia in the Georgian village of Kvemo-Achebeti in August 2008. Blogger 'Cyxymu' is an outspoken critic of the conflict
This results in a huge cyber jam, blocking legitimate traffic to the websites.
Graham Cluley, of internet security specialist Sophos, said: 'It's a bit like 15 fat men trying to get through a revolving door at the same time — nothing can move. In the meantime, micro-bloggers around the world are likely to be left twiddling their thumbs.'
Max Kelly, of Facebook, said: 'It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard.
'We're actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can.'
Facebook has more than 250 million users worldwide the hackers also used something called a 'botnet' in an attempt to crash the websites.
The Twitter blogsite, which confirmed the outage was due to a cyber-attack
Large amounts of spam emails were sent out containing a link to the activist blogging websites.
When thousands of people clicked on the links at the same time some servers were overwhelmed by the demand.
'The attacks appear to be directed at an individual who has a presence on a number of sites, rather than the sites themselves,' said Mr Kelly.
Security experts also said that criminals are increasingly threatening to sabotage websites who refuse to pay ransoms.
Twitter's co-founder Biz Stone said: 'Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users. We are defending against this attack.'
The site has seen a huge rise in popularity in recent months and it is now the 38th most visited site in Britain.
Google said: 'Google systems prevented substantive impact to our services. We are aware that a handful of non-Google sites were impacted by a DOS attack, and are in contact with some affected companies to help investigate this attack.'