Twitter, Facebook attacked to silence man called Cyxymu
August 11, 2009 - 10:54AM

Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal say they are continuing to fend off cyber attacks that last week derailed the popular Internet services.

"The attacks continued but we got better at dealing with them such that Twitter remains active," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in an email reply to an AFP inquiry. "Our systems are looking good and the platform is healthy".

A Georgian blogger known as "Cyxymu" has blamed Russia for the massive cyber assault that affected millions of internet users worldwide by disrupting Google, Twitter and Facebook.

Speaking to AFP in the Georgian capital, the blogger said he believed Russia was behind the distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and meant to silence his criticism of Moscow's role in last year's Georgia-Russia war.

"An attack of such a scale would cost a huge amount of money. This is why I think that some structures in Russia are behind this," said the 34-year-old blogger, who said his real name was Giorgi and that he works as an economics lecturer at a Tbilisi university.

He did not explain why such a computer-based attack would require high financing and none of the companies hit by the attack has said the Russian government or any other state organised it.

"It is not clear to me why I was targeted, but the fact that this attack happened proves that I've been doing something important," he said. "On my blogs I have been writing about Russia's preparations for the war, what was happening on August 7 last year and how the war started."

"Cyxymu" is a Latinised version of the Russian spelling of Sukhumi, the capital of Georgia's rebel Abkhazia region, which Giorgi said he fled during a war in the early 1990s.

Social networking sites Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal were temporarily overwhelmed by the assaults, causing disruptions on Thursday and on Friday, which marked the anniversary of the outbreak of the war.

Facebook said Friday that Cyxymu pages at Facebook and LiveJournal, described as the work of an "activist blogger", were targeted in the cyber assault. It said it had isolated the trouble and service for its more than 250 million users had returned to normal.

Twitter also said the attacks appeared to be "geopolitical in motivation" but refused to speculate on who was behind them.

The blogger said he did not realise he was the target of the cyber attack until reading media reports linking his sites to the incident.

"Initially I did not realise what was happening -- I thought it was an internet connection problem," he said, adding that he started to become suspicious when friends and family told him they were receiving spam emails from his account.

"The next day I saw on the internet a newspaper story that Facebook had been blocked because of me. After this I was finally convinced that this was happening because of me," he said.

Last year's war saw Russian troops pour into Georgia following a Georgian military assault on its rebel region of South Ossetia. After occupying swathes of territory Russian forces later withdrew into South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Moscow recognised as independent states.