Read about: Twitter George Attack

On August 6th, 2009, both Twitter and Facebook faced a denial-of-service attack, which ultimately caused Twitter to be offline for several hours. A denial-of-service attack is nothing more than a hacking attempt to make computer resources (such as a website) unavailable for the people who want to use it. Usually, it occurs when an individual or a group makes a concentrated hacking effort to overload a website with fake communication requests that either bog down or completely shut down the website. In this instance, named the Twitter George Attack, hackers attacked a pro-Georgian Twitter user around the anniversary of the 2008 South Ossetia War.

After the Twitter George Attack, the afflicted social networking site stated that they felt the attacks were the result of numerous innocent computers being infected with a virus that forced them to send enough automated requests to overwhelm Twitter’s infrastructure.

According to analysts after the event, it was unlikely that the hackers behind the Twitter George Attacks meant to completely cripple the social networking site. In fact, it was unlikely that the attacks were intended to cause any kind of widespread problems. Instead, it appeared that the attackers were only trying to remove a single blogger from the affected sites. The attack itself just wasn’t particularly sophisticated, and attempted to do nothing more than make the targeted blogger’s accounts look like they were the ones sending out the spam requests. The attack most likely began small, and then was escalated after its launch, becoming considerably larger than originally intended.

The blogger who was the target of these attacks identifies himself simply as George (thus the name the Twitter George Attack). He is a 34 year old native of Georgia who owned and operated Facebook, Livejournal and Twitter accounts. George stated that he felt the attacks were intended to remove his blogs due to their politically incendiary material.

Before the attacks, George was writing and publishing articles and investigative news stories detailing (and critical of) Russia’s aggression towards Georgia. In his posts, George included specific information regarding how Russia was training soldiers and mobilizing their military equipment to use in war against Georgia, and how specific separatists were causing escalating provocations before the war. George felt that this chronicling of events surrounding the war was inflammatory and dangerous enough to inspire the digital retaliation.

Besides simply writing about the Russian military’s action prior to the way, George also used his social networking platforms to write in detail about all the reforms and changes being made in Georgia after the war- events and decisions that he felt the international community was not fully aware of. Specifically, he hope to resume and strengthen relations between the Abkhazians and the Georgian people. For him, the Twitter George Attack was perpetrated by people who felt threatened by “the idea of the united, independent, democratic and prosperous Georgia.”

While the source behind the Twitter George Attack has not been conclusively identified, many point to Russia, as the larger country had a vested interest in suppressing pro-Georgian material. Furthermore, Twitter officially stated that it is not uncommon for denial-of-service attacks, like the Twitter George Attack, to spring up in areas of the world in the middle of tense political conflicts, and that similar attacks were reported in the middle of the Russia-Georgian war.