We gotta fix that little sucker!
Like me, you innocently inputted the Internet address for twitter in your browser yesterday and naturally expected to be transported (as usual without much fuss or fanfare) to the popular social networking site for your daily fix of pop culture.
But, what was this?
An error code blandly flashed on the computer screen.
"Denial of access".
Huh?
Did twitter simply pack-up-shop with nary a tweet good-bye - another fly-by-night outfit gone the way of the dinosaur?
I was optimistic: not!
As I multi-tasked a myriad of windows that flitted off-and-on the screen with the flick of a finger, I kept my chin up, as I creatively explored ways to find my way back to the twitter "nest".
At google, I spied a link to twitter in response to search references to moi, but a hasty click on the link was fruitless.
No back-door way in, dudes!
Or, in Arnold vernacular (Bill Clinton's, too), no cigar!
About twenty minutes later, though, I was in like Flynn!
Twitter was just humming along - all-a-tweet business as usual - and none the wiser?
Say, what?
According to Internet experts - and half-baked news flashes streaking out across the splintered blogosphere on the unexpected black-out at Twitter - a cyber attack rendered an all-across-the-net "denial of service" scenario that summarily paralyzed the normally high-trafficked site.
Was it the nasty handy work of a disgruntled tweeter - out to exact punishment (and a little mischievous mayhem) - on the heels of being rejected by twitter's socially-elite?
Or, a jealous rival out-to-ruin Twitter, for being just a little too tweet?
Curiously, the day before, I suffered a bit of a (sexual) attack at my twitter home page.
Yeah, what-a-way to go!
Shortly after I clicked on a link in my yahoo mailbox to scan the profile of a tweeter just starting to "follow me" on the twitter website, the screen was flooded with a barrage of racy sexual images and a naughty request by the new tweeter to perform a hardcore sex act.
I penned a post on the incident to warn fellow tweeters.
Post: 08/05/09
http://ijulian.blogspot.com/2009/08/twitterporn-creeps-into-social.html
Golly, do 'ya suppose the expose (and subsequent rejection) prompted the full-scale attack?
Who knows!
According to security experts examining the widespread attack, fingerprints of a sophisticated operation involving "botnets" was uncovered.
In a nutshell, giant armies of personal computers, had been taken over by hackers unbeknown to their owners.
Funny, that!
At a coffee clatch at a doughnut shop the other morning, I warned fellow java drinkers to be sure to turn off their computers at night so that kind of clandestine (illegal?) intrusion was kept at bay.
But, what was this?
An error code blandly flashed on the computer screen.
"Denial of access".
Huh?
Did twitter simply pack-up-shop with nary a tweet good-bye - another fly-by-night outfit gone the way of the dinosaur?
I was optimistic: not!
As I multi-tasked a myriad of windows that flitted off-and-on the screen with the flick of a finger, I kept my chin up, as I creatively explored ways to find my way back to the twitter "nest".
At google, I spied a link to twitter in response to search references to moi, but a hasty click on the link was fruitless.
No back-door way in, dudes!
Or, in Arnold vernacular (Bill Clinton's, too), no cigar!
About twenty minutes later, though, I was in like Flynn!
Twitter was just humming along - all-a-tweet business as usual - and none the wiser?
Say, what?
According to Internet experts - and half-baked news flashes streaking out across the splintered blogosphere on the unexpected black-out at Twitter - a cyber attack rendered an all-across-the-net "denial of service" scenario that summarily paralyzed the normally high-trafficked site.
Was it the nasty handy work of a disgruntled tweeter - out to exact punishment (and a little mischievous mayhem) - on the heels of being rejected by twitter's socially-elite?
Or, a jealous rival out-to-ruin Twitter, for being just a little too tweet?
Curiously, the day before, I suffered a bit of a (sexual) attack at my twitter home page.
Yeah, what-a-way to go!
Shortly after I clicked on a link in my yahoo mailbox to scan the profile of a tweeter just starting to "follow me" on the twitter website, the screen was flooded with a barrage of racy sexual images and a naughty request by the new tweeter to perform a hardcore sex act.
I penned a post on the incident to warn fellow tweeters.
Post: 08/05/09
http://ijulian.blogspot.com/2009/08/twitterporn-creeps-into-social.html
Golly, do 'ya suppose the expose (and subsequent rejection) prompted the full-scale attack?
Who knows!
According to security experts examining the widespread attack, fingerprints of a sophisticated operation involving "botnets" was uncovered.
In a nutshell, giant armies of personal computers, had been taken over by hackers unbeknown to their owners.
Funny, that!
At a coffee clatch at a doughnut shop the other morning, I warned fellow java drinkers to be sure to turn off their computers at night so that kind of clandestine (illegal?) intrusion was kept at bay.
Thomas Holt, a professor at Michigan State's School of Criminal Justice, put it this way:
"Botnets are very stable platforms able to engage in all sorts of cyber crimes."
He surmised that launching an attack on a popular web site - such as Twitter - was an excellent exacting way to measure the capability (and power) of a botnet.
Gosh, if that was just a dress rehearsal, what's next?
Jerry Dixon, a former director of the National Cybersecurity Division at the Department of Homeland Security, advanced the idea further when he speculated that hackers may have used the twitter incident to demonstrate the potency of their skills.
They are similar to hit men, but with digital packets instead of bullets, he warned.
In the anti-virus arena, Beth Jones (Internet security squad at Sophos) noted that her contemporaries in the field have theorized that the attack was caused by a computer worm known as a Koobface.
"It was professionally written," she concluded.
On a more innocent level, the worm could be used to flood Internet-based e-mail boxes, with spam mail for commercially-based purposes.
In the wake of the unexpected onslaught, Twitter has taken the position that they were a victim of a distributed "denial of service" attack.
In simple terms, this kind of "dark" overt intrusion, is intended as a disruptive attempt to overwhelm a website by issuing a a mind-boggling number of computer-generated requests that the computer can not ultimately process.
Consequently, the attack causes the site to "crash".
Today, twitter is up-and-running and life is tweet once again.
Watch your back!
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