On Aug 6, 2009, at 10:26 PM, Bill Woodcock wrote:
On Thu, 6 Aug 2009, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/technology/internet/07twitter.html
Mr. Woodcock said this particular attack consisted of a wave of spam e-mail messages, which began infiltrating Twitter
Uh... Yes, well, the gist of my explanation of how joe-jobs work may have eluded the reporter, but the point I was trying to get across was that I was aware of a joe-job, but not aware of a botnet.
Pity he just couldn't have used the phrase. It would have cleared it up some for me at least.
While I certainly trust PCH, I would be curious as to the evidence for this.
Google "cyxymu" and you should begin to see copies of the joe-job spam, as well as the earlier and archived postings this guy has made in the past.
These URLs may be of interest, if you're really curious about the politics behind the attack:
http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/29542/b5f1ff2ebdb92dabafda4b44e960db4c.htm
Note that this is a deeply-layered conflict, with both sides trying to pass off actions as those of the other, and I don't know of anyone who's asserted that they have any means of determining whether this was a Georgian attack on an Abkhazian blogger, or a Russian or Abkhazian faux-martyring of an Abkhazian blogger that few people cared about yesterday, but who will have his seven minutes of fame in tomorrow's press.
Given that the start of major hostilities there was 1 year ago today (the Georgian bombing and attack on Tskhinvali) and the war continued for 6 more days (until August 12th) I would not be surprised if there was more mischief in store. Let's hope this doesn't become a tradition. Thank you for the information. Regards Marshall
I don't have an opinion on the matter, and I don't think many in our community will probably take any interest in the underlying politics. What matters is that smart people in our community at Google and SixApart and Twitter communicated and coordinated quickly and effectively, and established a lot of connections that will serve them well in responding to things of this sort again in the future. INOC-DBA and NSP-Sec and the Anti-Spam list all got a workout today, and they all functioned exactly as they were intended to.
-Bill