Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal- downed yesterday to silence one dude?

You may know him as Cyxymu, and apparently some of his views are a smidgen unpopular.

Facebook outages were not, as I speculated yesterday, the effects of Twitter overflow. In addition to Twitter and Facebook, LiveJournal, Blogger and YouTube were also drawn in to the effort to silence Cyxymu. Facebook’s chief security officer Max Kelly explained the motivation behind the attack to CNET:

“It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard,” Kelly said. “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.”

Kelly wouldn’t voice any suspicions on who was responsible for the attacks, but he did say this:

“You have to ask who would benefit the most from doing this and think about what those people are doing and the disregard for the rest of the users and the Internet.”

The New York Times wasn’t afraid to speculate.

Most computer security analysts did not cite a specific source of the attack on Twitter.

But Bill Woodcock, research director of the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit technical organization that tracks Internet traffic, said the attack was an extension of the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

It was not clear who initiated the attack, Mr. Woodcock said, but it was likely that “one side put up propaganda, the other side figured this out and is attacking them.” He said he found evidence that the attacks had originated from the Abkhazia region, a territory on the Black Sea disputed between Russia and Georgia.

Everything’s back to normal at the affected sites, but with a Gawker/Consumerist attack also originating out of Eastern Europe earlier this week, let’s hope it doesn’t become the new hotness.

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