SpeedPlexer Blog

A few months ago, we ran a story about the Twitpocalypse, the end of the Twitter world as we knew it.  It didn’t occur when expected, but this week’s series of Twitter attacks has made it feel close. 

The New York Times BITS blog reported, “Twitter, the popular microblogging service, was crippled Thursday morning by a denial-of-service attack. The extended silence in a normally noisy Twitterworld began around 9 a.m. Twitter later posted a note to its status update page saying the site had been slowed to a standstill by an attack.” They went on to explain that a denial-of-service attack involves thousands of malware-infected home PCs that are directed to flood a targeted site with junk traffic. Once the site is overwhelmed, legitimate visitors cannot access the service.

Later posts to the BITS blog explain that the Twitter attack came in two waves. It seemed the point was to silence a blogger’s criticism on the behavior of Russia in the conflict over the South Ossetia region in Georgia, which began a year ago on Friday. The technique they used was intended to discredit the blogger by making it appear as though he was the source of a large amount of junk e-mails, causing all of his messages to be filtered out.

Saturday’s BITS blog gave more information as the attacks continued to keep people from Tweeting.

Only time will tell if we’ve become so attached to our real-time messaging that a few days without service will cause us problems. While Twitter was the only service that could get news out from Iran after their election a few months ago, it seems cyber-bad-guys have found ways to silence other dissenters with internet speed.

Last week, cyberspace was all a-Twitter about the idea that Twitter, the real-time short messaging service, was banned at the White House.  Read Write Web said that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs casually mentioned on CNN that Twitter was blocked on official White House computers and that “[s]ome cynics will say this is great news, that taxpayer money isn’t being wasted on using Twitter on White House time.” But they also argued for the  importance of social networking in this day and age of internet speed, especially to the Obama administration, whose presence in the White House can be largely attributed to their shrewd use of new media. 

But a few days later, TechCrunch explained that there isn’t actually a blanket ban on Twitter from the White House. Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton told the press that for reasons of security and record keeping, Twitter is blocked from some computers, but posts can be made via HootSuite and staff members are allowed to tweet from their own devices. Official White House tweets are handled by the new media team, while President Obama’s account is apparently handled by the Democratic National Committee.

Then TechCrunch divulged that the White House wants us to know that it likes Twitter, and that the Deputy Press Secretary has a good sense of humor and seems to have a good grasp on the medium, having said “I have an account that I follow on my personal blackberry but I don’t actually twitter myself. It’s more to keep track of what Diddy and Perez Hilton are up to all day.”