Taking Down Twitter and Facebook To Silence One Man

If this report is accurate, the denial of service attacks that brought down Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Google's Blogger, and Youtube yesterday were actually attacks aimed at silencing one man's voice, a Georgian blogger by the name of Cyxymu (the name of a town in the Republic of Georgia).

This would be an escalation of "conflict" that has dizzying consequences for the internet, communication networks, and other networks. Hackers will have publicly crossed a threshold: they are willing to bring down the entire network in order to silence a single person from speaking. This is not cutting off your nose to spite your face, this is cutting off your head to spite your face.

If the story turns out to be true and the blogger the hackers were attempting to silence is in fact Georgian, I would have almost no doubt that the attacks originated from Russia, sponsored in part by their government (known for its collaboration and loose oversight of Russian hackers). Is this the next evolution in Russia's information warfare capability?

Evolution #1: In 2007 Russian hackers, according to some reports at the behest of the Russian government, attacked the communications infrastructure, financial networks, and internet in Estonia after a row erupted over moving a Russian statue. NATO experts said the hackers caused several million dollars worth of damage. Estonia even asked NATO to invoke Article 5 (which requires members to come to the defense of another member who is attacked) which was last invoked on 9/11.

Evolution #2: Russia invades the Republic of Georgia in 2008 with tanks, soldiers, airplanes, and integrated information operations campaign. Hackers and information warfare specialists took down Georgian government websites, blocked access to the internet in Georgia, and waged a information campaign to discredit the government and leaders of Georgia.

Evolution #3 (??): In 2009 Hackers use simultaneous denial of service attacks to take down Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, Google Blogger, and Youtube to silence one individual blogger from being heard.

That is a scary evolution and fast too.