Russian president blasts Livejournal cyber attackers

RUSSIAN PRESIDENT Dmitry Medvedev used his Livejournal blog to aim his venom against cyber attackers targeting the website.

Livejournal is a particularly popular blogging tool in Russia, used by well known figures like the president and renowned anti-corruption lawyer Alexey Navalny.

But since 24 March it has been targeted and hit with massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, and on 4 April Livejournal was taken down for a time, with the website forced to issue a statement.

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on his blog, "Received many complaints in connection with DDoS attacks on Livejournal."

"As an active user of Livejournal I believe these actions are outrageous and illegal. What has occurred should be examined by LiveJournal's administration and law enforcement agencies."

The reasons for the attacks are unknown, because as Kaspersky security researcher Maria Garnaeva said in a blog post, it affects a wide variety of bloggers who write about a range of things.

She was also unclear about how many botnets were involved, although she did name one of them that is based on an DDoS bot called 'Optima', which is popular in the Russian cybercrime underworld.

She said, "It first appeared at the end of 2010 on the Russian-speaking cybercrime black market and quickly achieved popularity."

"Apart from DDoS attacks, the bot's functionality includes downloading other executable files and stealing passwords for a number of popular programs." µ