August 10, 2009 by Matt Thomas
The debate surrounding the political ramifications of Twitter intensified last week when allegations that Russian hackers had launched a coordinated denial of service attack on Twitter and other social networking sites in order to silence a pro Georgian blogger came to light.
Twitter, already a political hot potato after site directors delayed site maintenance in order not to impede the work of reformist Iranian bloggers (some say at the urging of the US government), was the only site to actually succumb to the attack, with Facebook, et al. proving more resilient.
The attack, that security experts claim originated in Russia, was implemented via a massive botnet, or network of compromised computers, constantly sending requests to sites in order to impede legitimate traffic to the site.
At present there is no evidence, or even suggestion that the attack was in any way state-funded or organised, nor is there likely to be, as attacks like this are actually fairly basic and could easily have been the work of one individual with only a moderate level of skill. The attack has, however, raised questions about how this kind of political hacking may be deployed in the future to control the flow of information about a scandal, hamper the organisers of protests, or impede discourse in tight election races.
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