Friday
Aug072009
Iran and the Facebook-Twitter Cyber-Attacks


“Judging by my past IT experience and the way things developed yesterday, it appears that Facebook administrators put the pages of Karroubi, Mousavi, Zahra R, etc offline in order to stabilise the flow of the entire system, as the DDOS would ostensibly cease once the sites were seemingly knocked off air. This is why FB did not entirely go off air – the pressure on it abated once the reformists page were suspended. Twitter on the other hand was a free for all target, and had to withstand more damage. Another thing that lends credence to this theory is that fact that none of the the suspended pages have lost content or have been defaced. However, all this is speculation until FB and Twitter officially announce what went on yesterday.”
Edit: Facebook have subsequently confirmed to the BBC that the strike was actually aimed at a pro-Georgian blogger known as Cyxymu. In an interview with The Guardian, Cyxymu blamed the Russian Government for instigating the cyber attack.