Apparently Russia's President Gets Angry When You Hit His Blog With A Denial Of Service Attack

from the blog-is-down-for-an-hour! dept

Fri, Apr 8th 2011 2:39pm — Mike Masnick

Denial of service attacks are a pain, but they happen. In many ways they're becoming one way that people protest against powerful people and organizations -- and some have discussed how many are effectively the equivalent of a digital sit-in. Of course, it's no fun to be on the receiving end of a DoS attack, and if you're in a position of power, it isn't surprising to react angrily to such an attack. But it does seem a little out of proportion for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to demand that Russian law enforcement officials look into the reason why his LiveJournal blog was taken offline for a whole hour due to a denial of service attack.

"I have received many appeals in connection with the ... attacks on LiveJournal. As an active user of (LiveJournal) I consider these actions revolting and illegal.... What has occurred should be examined by LiveJournal's administration and law enforcement agencies."

Of course, it does seem a bit strange that he's only concerned about denial of service attacks when they impact him personally. Also, LiveJournal? Isn't that kinda like if President Obama had a blog on Blogspot? It's not that hard these days to have a blog on your own domain...

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Filed Under: blog, denial of service, livejournal, medvedev, russia
Companies: livejournal

21 Comments

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EFG (profile), 8 Apr 2011 @ 2:44pm

Well
LiveJournal is, last I heard, Russian owned. So he may just be supporting the 'local' economy.
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- Andrew, 3 Dec 2011 @ 6:11am
  
  Re: Well
  Good for Russia.
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- Katherine, 25 Jan 2012 @ 8:03pm
  
  Re:
  I have heard of LiveJournal before never knew it was Russian owned.
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umccullough (profile), 8 Apr 2011 @ 2:57pm

Which would you rather have?
A few hundred thousand script-kiddies running LOIC to take down your site?

Or nobody visiting it at all?
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- :Lobo Santo (profile), 8 Apr 2011 @ 3:07pm
  
  Re: Which would you rather have?
  Umm, isn't that a false dichotomy? Those aren't even close to being mutually exclusive conditions.
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  - umccullough (profile), 8 Apr 2011 @ 3:09pm
    
    Re: Re: Which would you rather have?
    I know - but if nobody visited his blog, it wouldn't likely be a target for DDoS anyway :)
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  - Bruce Partington, 8 Apr 2011 @ 3:09pm
    
    Re: Re: Which would you rather have?
    You must be new here.
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    - :Lobo Santo (profile), 8 Apr 2011 @ 3:22pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Which would you rather have?
      Yep, I'm new here. Only been frequenting & commenting on TechDirt for like 3 years.
      /sarc
      
      ;-P
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KnownHuman (profile), 8 Apr 2011 @ 3:17pm

LiveJournal
Just think, with his LJ down for an hour, nobody was able to read his really bad poetry!
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- Capitalist Lion Tamer (profile), 8 Apr 2011 @ 4:12pm
  
  Re: LiveJournal
  Just think, when his LJ is restored, nobody will read his really bad poetry!
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  - The eejit (profile), 9 Apr 2011 @ 1:56am
    
    Re: Re: LiveJournal
    In post-Soviet Russia, Poetry Livejournals YOU!
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Apr 2011 @ 3:41pm

y'know, considering the Russian Internet is a cesspool of infringement, pirate kiddies pissing off the country's President definitely gets filed in the "Amazingly Stupid Moves" department.
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Big Mook, 8 Apr 2011 @ 3:48pm

Obligatory
In communist Russia, president's blog hits you!

Sorry, couldn't resist.
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Denis V., 9 Apr 2011 @ 7:08am

No need to be so snarky, there's a good reason for this
Last week's DDoS attacks on livejournal are a hot, and actually very interesting, news topic in Russia. The reason is that the site is considered the most popular - and some would say the only - platform for independent citizen journalism and critique of the government. Since there are presidential elections coming up next year, there's a reasonable fear among the opposition that the attacks are actually government-based, trying to show that everyone can be silenced, and that livejournal isn't safe.

Medvedev's statements are, in fact, an attempt to deny that LJ DDoS has anything to do with the government.
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Max (profile), 9 Apr 2011 @ 9:58am

There is also another explanation - that "DDoS attacks" explanation is a coverup of the company failing to roll out new technology upgrade which lead to DoS.
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Max (profile), 9 Apr 2011 @ 10:03am

Oh, and about these:

> Of course, it does seem a bit strange that he's only concerned about denial of service attacks when they impact him personally.

I don't think the president knew what DoS is before receiving news from his aides that Livejournal is, in fact, down :)

> Also, LiveJournal? Isn't that kinda like if President Obama had a blog on Blogspot? It's not that hard these days to have a blog on your own domain...

This was surely a political decision - "the government supports and promotes IT industry, etc".
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Shine (profile), 24 Oct 2011 @ 4:55am

it happens
That's interesting...the Russian President has his own blog and is very active at it.
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Lady from 20x tab results, 22 Dec 2011 @ 1:10am

Yeah right,it seems that they are all good with that field.
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Joy, 23 Dec 2011 @ 9:38pm

I really need to work on my blog now...LOL even the Russian President has a blog!
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Nicole, 4 Feb 2012 @ 6:39pm

Politicians are freely using the internet for promoting themselves and their agenda.
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Ann, 30 Mar 2012 @ 10:17am

What exactly are "denial of service attacks?"
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