DDoS Attacks On LiveJournal Target Russian Anti Corruption Blogger

Unknown attackers have launched distributed denial of service attacks on a long list of blogs hosted on the social media site LiveJournal, including the blog of a prominent anti-corruption blogger in Russia.

The attacks, which began on March 24, initially targeted the LiveJournal addresses associated with a popular anti-corruption blogger, Alexey Navalny. In recent days, the attacks have expanded to a longer list of LiveJournal sites, according to a report on Kaspersky Lab's Securelist blog.

Kaspersky Lab Expert Maria Garnaeva speculates that the second round of attacks may be less of an attack on the sites listed in the Securelist report, than it was a method of obscuring their actual target, Navalny. Alternatively, they could be evidence of business to business attack against a LiveJournal site by a competitor, a practice she claims is not uncommon.

Oddly enough, LiveJournal has yet to report any of this to Russian authorities.

“We haven’t approached the Russian law enforcement authorities with a request to start legal proceedings but we don’t exclude a lawsuit option,” said Svetlana Ivannikova, head of LiveJournal Russia, told Securelist.

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