Elinor Mills of cnet reports that the DOS against twitter, facebook, livejournal and blogger were focused on a single Russian blogger using the name Cyxymu.

A pro-Georgian blogger with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and Google’s Blogger and YouTube was targeted in a denial of service attack that led to the site-wide outage at Twitter and problems at the other sites on Thursday, according to a Facebook executive.

The blogger, who uses the account name “Cyxymu,” (the name of a town in the former Soviet Republic) had accounts on all of the different sites that were attacked at the same time, Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, told CNET News.

“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.”

According to the Register, Researcher: Twitter attack targeted anti-Russian blogger, the DOS attack was driven by spam rather than a botnet. Spam messages enticed their recipients to click on a link to one of Cyxymu’s many social media accounts.

You can try to access Cyxymu’s pages on twitter, livejournal, facebook, blogger and youtube.

It will be interesting to see what comes from today’s DDOS attacks on twitter, facebook and liveJournal. It is certainly a show of strength from whoever controls the botnets that launched the attacks. We can only assume that three three are from the same source or at lease related sources. Some sources:

• Official twitter status
• Official twitter blog
• Wired: Facebook Confirms Denial-of-Service Attack
• Techcrunch
• NTY Bits blog
• Computerworld

Was it a test? Demonstration? Preparation for extortion (Nice little Internet you got there. Shame if something happened to it.)?

The Department of Defense remains conflicted about their position on social media.

This past Sunday the US Marine Corps announced an immediate ban of Internet social networking sites on their NIPRNET network due to potential security risks. Specific examples of the sites now banned included facebook, myspace, and twitter.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tweeted yesterday.

“Obviously we need to find right balance between security and transparency. We are working on that. But am I still going to tweet? You bet.”

The comment also appeared on Admiral Mullen’s facebook page.

While it’s tempting to poke fun at the apparent contradictions involved, it’s easy to see a difference. Its well known that there are many vulnerabilities on the Web that can result in compromising a computer and that they are more likely to be encountered in open, popular environments, like social media systems. So it’s prudent to limit access to some of these from networks like NIPRNET that are used for sensitive information. On the other hand, we assume that the computer used by Admiral Mullen and his staff for public announcements and PR are on conventional networks, so the risks asscociated with security problems are greatly reduced.

Still, you have to admit that it’s ironic.

The Washington Post has a long article on the latest Obama administration plan to protect government agencies from cyber attacks, Cybersecurity Plan to Involve NSA, Telecoms — DHS Officials Debating The Privacy Implications.

“The Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan to use National Security Agency assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks, with AT&T as the likely test site, according to three current and former government officials.

President Obama said in May that government efforts to protect computer systems from attack would not involve “monitoring private-sector networks or Internet traffic,” and Department of Homeland Security officials say the new program will scrutinize only data going to or from government systems.

But the program has provoked debate within DHS, the officials said, because of uncertainty about whether private data can be shielded from unauthorized scrutiny, how much of a role NSA should play and whether the agency’s involvement in warrantless wiretapping during George W. Bush’s presidency would draw controversy. Each time a private citizen visited a “dot-gov” Web site or sent an e-mail to a civilian government employee, that action would be screened for potential harm to the network.”

This is reported to be a continuation of the Einstein 3 program begun under the Bush administration. One difference is the new role for DHS in providing some oversight and guidance.

“Under a classified pilot program approved during the Bush administration, NSA data and hardware would be used to protect the networks of some civilian government agencies. Part of an initiative known as Einstein 3, the plan called for telecommunications companies to route the Internet traffic of civilian agencies through a monitoring box that would search for and block computer codes designed to penetrate or otherwise compromise networks.”

There’s a lot more in the article that is worth reading.