Twittergate: Update 1

Anti-Georgia Russian hackers may have been behind yesterday's global cyber attacks on Google, Facebook and Twitter. The organised web assaults completely shut down social networking site Twitter and disrupted access to Facebook — nearly a year to the day since the outbreak of the Georgia-Russia war.

Search engine Google was also targeted but managed to fend off the "denial-of-service" attacks. Hackers used the popular technique to hijack thousands of computers and use them to send messages to a target website at the same time — causing it to crash.

And a Facebook executive revealed that a Georgian blogger called Cymxymu — who has accounts on all the websites — was the target of the attack.

Facebook boss Max Kelly 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."

• "Russian Hackers Eyed in Attack on Twitter, Google and Facebook", Fox News, 8/7/09.
• "Twitter attack is a growth pang", LA Times, 8/7/09
• "Facebook 1, Twitter 0", Forbes, 8/6/09.