Attacks On Twitter, Facebook Shutdown Result Of Massive Attack On One Person

DDoS Attacks On Twitter, Facebook Result Of Massive Attack On One Person
Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and for those that know me, you understand some of the crazy things I’ve been going through and working on.  Recently there has been some outages on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and some other social giants.  Many of us were wondering what was the cause of this  massive outage / attack.  Below is an article from DarkReading that explains how why so many people had to go without their social addiction for a few hours.

Botnet attack takes aim at pro-Georgian blogger and leaves collateral damage on social networking sites

Aug 07, 2009

By Kelly Jackson Higgins
DarkReading

It turns out yesterday's major distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that shut down Twitter for hours and disrupted Facebook and LiveJournal came out of a targeted attack waged against one individual with accounts on all of the sites.

A pro-Georgian blogger called "Cyxymu" was apparently the intended target of the massive DDoS that knocked down Twitter and caused major slowdowns on Facebook and LiveJournal when a botnet apparently blasted waves of traffic at his accounts on the sites simultaneously in an effort to shut down his communiques.

Cyxymu tweeted yesterday on his Twitter profile that the attackers were "Russian KGB." The blogger, who later unmasked himself to CNN as "George," 34, of Tbilisi, Georgia, told the cable giant that his recent blog posts may have triggered the attacks. One post, he told CNN, discussed "how Russia was preparing military aggression (sic) against Georgia, how they were training soldiers and mobilizing military equipment, what kind of provocations were carried out by the separatists prior to the war," according to the CNN report. He also said the attacks were timed to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Russia-Georgia conflict.

As of this morning, Cyxymu's LiveJournal site was still down.

Various reports attributed the attack to an email spam run gone wild, but security experts dismissed that theory, saying it had to be a coordinated attack from bots. "There's no way that simply spamming out email containing the links would generate that kind of traffic to the social networking sites. There simply wouldn't be enough people who would click on the links to create a DDoS," says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "So this must have been a 'traditional' DDoS attack from compromised computers [that] could hammer the Websites with multiple requests every few seconds."

Twitter acknowledged it was working with other services on "what appears to be a single, massively coordinated attack. As to the motivation behind this event, we prefer not to speculate." It said no user data was compromised.

Facebook confirmed the attacks were going after one person: "Yesterday's attack appears to be directed at an individual who has a presence on a number of sites, rather than the sites themselves. Specifically, the person is an activist blogger and a botnet was directed to request his pages at such a rate that it impacted service for other users. We've isolated the issue and almost all of our users are able to enjoy the normal Facebook experience," the company said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Facebook's chief security officer, Max Kelly, is quoted in another report: "It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard," he told CNET.

And from the blog of Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for F-Secure: "Whoever is behind this attack, they had significant bandwidth available. Our best guess is that these attacks were done by nationalistic Russian hackers who wanted to silence a visible online opponent. While doing that, they've only managed to attract more attention to Cyxymu and his message."

In addition to the DDoS attacks on Cyxymu's Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal accounts, Hypponen says the blogger's YouTube account was DDoS'ed, and he was also targeted by a so-called "Joe Job'"spamming attack with email purported to be from "George" and trying to lure users to his blog on LiveJournal.

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Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

Google Profiling – Getting your name seen on Google and controlling it

Google Yourself
We all have googled ourselves. Some more often than others, and most not because we have big ego’s, but we are curious to see what it is that the world sees about us. Google has offered little to no support in controlling what it is that googlers see about us, until now. By simply searching “me” in Google , you will be given the opportunity to create or edit your profile.

Originally posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

Who are you?
Social networking is all the buzz. And I’m sure that if you are reading this you have profiles on mySpace, Facebook, twitter, and linked In. And now… you need to maintain your Google profile. Often these social networks allow us a little more control of expressing who we are.

Set Up a Google Profile
Setting up a Google profile is very easy and pretty quick. So if you haven’t done it yet, I’d recommend doing that as soon as you finish this short article. Google has modified their search results to include profiles at the bottom of the page. These profiles show up like regular search results, and while it is at the bottom of the page, and you have little control over what is delivered on the top half, you can control what is delivered at the bottom and what Google says about you.

So maybe this isn’t as reassuring as we’d all like it to be, but it is a start. With the improved profile options, it makes it even easier to link to your Google profile, and to control what is shared through this profile.

Get Found on Google
I left my Google profile settings as default, but you will notice that it says “If you want your profile to appear in Google search results, make sure you've selected to display your full name on the Edit profile page. Adding more information will help you improve your profile's rank.” If you take this a step further and verify your name (either by credit card or phone number), you can get a verified icon near your name, showing that you truly are who you say. This isn’t completely reliable yet, and I have not done it. These Google profile searches will appear at the bottom of the first page regardless of whether your name has been verified or not.

Google software engineer Brian Stoler explains, "These results offer abbreviated information from user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles. We've also added links so it's easy to search for the same name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn."

Originally posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Josh Shackelford

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Maximizing Your Blog – Take 2

Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Joshua Shackelford

This is my official apology for my last post. It was just a quick list of some of the things that I did. It was more of an online location for me to post some personal notes. I wanted to take some time to rewrite that post so that it would be a little more beneficial. Here goes take 2.

I’ve also had a lot of questions about what blogs are. You may want to start by understanding the blog platform or a definition of a blog.

Here are the steps to go through to get the most distance out of your blog.

1. Find a home
You need to first find a home for your new blog. I’m biased, so I’d suggest here on Successful Thinkers. You can write me with questions on how to start one, if you like. Other options include;

• Successful Thinkers Meetup
• Blogspot (by google)
• Friendster
• Word Press
• Windows Live Spaces
• TypePad (Not Free)
• Live Journal
• and More…

2. Create a blog name
Use your real name (or keywords for your name). Each time that you post, this name will show up, and it will be in the URL of our site. URL’s give you a lot of weight and authority with search engines, so you would want to use your company name, keywords, or your personal name (alias) for your blog.

3. Add a professional picture to your profile
Your blog represents you and your company. It is important to have a professional picture associated with your blog to give you more authority. In addition, blogs are personal, so people want to be able to connect with the writer. A professional picture allows you to do this.

4. Write 5 blog posts
If you only have one or two posts, people won’t take you seriously. You need to write at least 5 articles or posts before continuing on. If you start driving people to your blog, but don’t have any content, people will leave and never return.

Time to get recognized
5.Add your blog to a feedburner
Feedburner is backed by Google, so it will give you additional visibility. In addition, it is a powerful service that will allow you to syndicate your blog with authority. For now you will just need to trust me on this. Later I’ll explain more about the power of feedburner.

• Create a feedburner account or use your google account
• Create a new feed
• Name your feed based on your company name or keywords (this will later be in the URL)
• Add your RSS feed to feedburner

6. Add your blog to various blog catalogs and RSS readers

• Technorati
• myBlogLog
• Google Reader
• Friend Feed
• Blogged
• Blog Catalog

7. Create a facebook account
Add your blog to facebook
a. Click Profile
b. Click on settings (onthe far right next to "All Posts"
c. Click on "Automatically import activity"
d. Click on "Blog/RSS"
e. Paste in your URL to your RSS feed to your blog

8. Create multiple blogs
Having multiple blogs will give you more visibility on the internet. I recommend creating a blog here on Successful Thinkers Meetup, and then cross-posting to other blogs. The STM engine supports automatic cross-posting, making things easy for you. Another easy method to keep multiple blogs up to date is using Windows Live Writer. When posting to multiple locations it is wise to add a line at the top and bottom that states where the blog was originally posted, so that your users know where to go for ultimate authority. The other blogs that I’m on are Google’s Blogger, and Friendster.

9. Syndicate your blog on your other blogs
RSS feeds allow you to syndicate your content on to other sites. If your other blogs support adding RSS readers as widgets, then you should add your primary blog as a feed on your other sites. This is a very simple process, as most of the time it us just a matter of copying and pasting the RSS link, and since you have already added your blog to feedburner, this is the feed to add to all of your sites.

10. Signup for "add this"
Add This allows you to quickly add a shortcut icon or bar to your blog so that people can share the information that they found on your site with their own social network that they have on other sites. This utility is free. You should add it to your content in your side bar for easier syndication.

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Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup by Joshua Shackelford

Build a following with email

So many people trying to build a following behind their blogs, Facebook profiles, Successful Thinkers profiles, and even their tweets, often forget about the power of email. I thought that this would be a good time to mention a few different formats for getting your message out.

Social Networking
Social networking is an amazing opportunity to stay connected with your friends or business associates. It provides a convenient place to check up on the things they are working on. You are able to make a one click stop to stay up to date on all of their activities and they can do the same. This value is only realized if you maintain your profile, announcements, and comments.

Blogs
Blogs are an even stronger platform for you to tell the world what you are about. You can post updates on projects, new releases, or even just state your opinion on current events. It is important to stay consistent with your theme, as your following will want to depend on your information. It provides a one click stop for your associates to stay up to date on you, just as a social network profile does. However, they will want to get something out of it, so don’t just make it a daily sales pitch.

Twitter
Twitter is a little bit harder to leverage. The 140 character limit prevents you from rambling on. You need to keep your posts short and to the point. Some people post updates as to where they are and what they are doing; but if you are just bouncing from one meeting to another, this isn’t that exciting to follow. Instead you need to tweet short descriptions about things that you have found interesting, and then post a link to the full run down. The power behind this is your short links won’t show the reader where they are going, until they get there. Now you can promote anything, or anyone you want, with a short link. I don’t tweet very often, but am more along the lines of only tweeting VERY interesting things.

Back to Email
All of the above internet mediums require your reader to come to you. If you are anything like me, you don’t publish fresh content daily. Sometimes it is weekly or even monthly. Your followers will not want to continually check your site for fresh content, just to be disappointed with the same old stale text. This is where the power of email can come in. Email allows you to push content out to your readers. Often I have heard of people’s newsletter lists referred to as ATM’s. A strong mailing list can provide you with an abundance of resources, if done correctly.

While it is extremely important to keep all of these different areas up to date with fresh content, it is just as important to let people know when there is fresh content for them to find. There are several different ways to accomplish this.

- Setup an opt-in email list with one of thousands of providers. (iContant, Constant Contact, aWeber)
- Leverage FeedBurner’s email opt-in. This is a great option, as it also allows you to maintain your syndication.
-Maintain a contact list within your email program (Outlook, Gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc.)

I personally prefer FeedBurner, as it is a free solution and helps with your syndication. Until your list gets really large, this is a viable solution; but then you’ll need to leverage a stronger list management system. iContact has a really strong API, allowing you to integrate other software with it, and has a very simple interface to create and track emails.

Originally Posted on Successful Thinkers Meetup

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