DOS in progress ?

Fri Aug 7 02:26:06 UTC 2009

      On Thu, 6 Aug 2009, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
    > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/technology/internet/07twitter.html

    > Mr. Woodcock said this
    > particular attack consisted of a wave of spam e-mail messages, which began
    > infiltrating Twitter

Uh...  Yes, well, the gist of my explanation of how joe-jobs work may have 
eluded the reporter, but the point I was trying to get across was that I 
was aware of a joe-job, but not aware of a botnet.

    > While I certainly trust PCH, I would be curious as to the evidence for
    > this.

Google "cyxymu" and you should begin to see copies of the joe-job spam, as 
well as the earlier and archived postings this guy has made in the past.  

These URLs may be of interest, if you're really curious about the politics 
behind the attack:

http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/29542/b5f1ff2ebdb92dabafda4b44e960db4c.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abkhazia

Note that this is a deeply-layered conflict, with both sides trying to 
pass off actions as those of the other, and I don't know of anyone who's 
asserted that they have any means of determining whether this was a 
Georgian attack on an Abkhazian blogger, or a Russian or Abkhazian 
faux-martyring of an Abkhazian blogger that few people cared about 
yesterday, but who will have his seven minutes of fame in tomorrow's 
press.  

I don't have an opinion on the matter, and I don't think many in our 
community will probably take any interest in the underlying politics.  
What matters is that smart people in our community at Google and SixApart 
and Twitter communicated and coordinated quickly and effectively, and 
established a lot of connections that will serve them well in responding 
to things of this sort again in the future.  INOC-DBA and NSP-Sec and the 
Anti-Spam list all got a workout today, and they all functioned exactly as 
they were intended to.

                                -Bill