The recent DDoS (Denial of Service) attack that almost crippled, Twitter and Facebook turned out to be a systematic targeted attack on a single user, known as “Cyxymu“ in the online realm. Cyxymu, is the user name of a Georgian blogger, who has now stated that, the attacks were initiated by Russian authorities. The cyber attack took place on the 6th of August 2009, and left social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter to a crawl, affecting millions of users.

The Georgian blogger, has stated that, he believes the attacks were conducted by Russia to silence his criticism of the Russian government for their war on the South Ossetia. In a statement, the blogger said,

“Maybe it was carried out by ordinary hackers but I’m certain the order came from the Russian government. An attack on such a scale that affected three worldwide services with numerous servers could only be organized by someone with huge resources.”

The real name of Cyxymu is Georgy, who is 34 years old and is economic lecturer and has been an active blogger and user of Facebook, Twitter and LiveJournal. Georgy has been constantly criticizing the ways with which Russian government has tackled the Caucasus region and he has been a victim of similar DDoS attack last year as well. According to Georgy,

“I didn’t expect that it would be an attack on me, I’m not such a famous blogger. It started when hundreds of thousands of spam emails supposedly from me were sent all over the world suggesting for people to visit one of my blogs. So thousands of people visited it causing it to freeze, and they [LiveJournal] had to block it again. Then the same thing happened with Facebook and Twitter.”

The tensions in the South Ossetia are at an all time high, with the anniversary of South Ossetia war resounding throughout the region. The anniversary itself has driven both Russian and Georgian forces to high alert. The anniversary is in lieu of last year’s Georgian artillery strikes against the breakaway republic, after which Russian forces invaded Georgia in five days horrific battle. In a statement, a Russian army source said,

“If Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili decides to repeat his reckless venture of last year‚ we will nip the aggression in the bud and destroy the Georgian army in the approaches to South Ossetia.”

Via Guardian.