The meltdown that left 45 million Twitter users unable to access the service on Thursday came in two waves and was directed at a single blogger who has voiced his support for the Republic of Georgia in that country’s continuing conflict with Russia.
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Early Thursday, the attackers sent out a wave of spam in the name of Cyxymu.
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“They’re literally designed to smear someone’s online reputation,” said Ms. Jones. “These hackers wanted to make him look responsible for millions of spam e-mails that went out yesterday morning.”
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The attacks coincided with the one-year anniversary of the Russia-Georgian conflict. “When the conflict started a year ago, there were various denial-of-service attacks coming from both sides, attacking Web sites.”