Friday, August 7, 2009

Twitter and Denial of Service

So I was reading some tech news this morning (a rare feat, but something I try to every now and again) and saw that apparently the denial-of-service attack on Twitter recently was targeted at one person -- a blogger from Georgia (the former Soviet Republic) who writes under the name of Cyxymu.

News sources revealed here, here, and here that this blogger had accounts on all the sites affected by the denial-of-service attack, and one theory is that it's Cyxymu's anti-Russian feelings that sparked the attack.

I'd either hate to be that blogger, or slightly impressed that someone, in trying to shut me down, either knocked out or slowed down five websites (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LiveJournal, and Blogger) in order to do it.

What's really scary is how many people attacks like this one can affect. Millions of people use Twitter and those other sites every day. They're part of our lives pretty much. And someone can simply highjack a network and send dozens, potentially thousands of people into a frenzy with the click of a mouse. Freaky.

1 comment:

Rick Daley said...

The more reliant upon technology we become, the greater our loss when it fails.