Attacks and Controls in RUNET

This week, a DDoS attack was launched on Livejournal— which, with 4.7 million Russian users, has become a powerful forum for political discussion in Russia (Maria Garnaeva of Kaspersky Lab has a great analysis and report of the attack). The attacks began on March 24, from the Optima botnet on prominent Livejournal user Alexei Navalny (who discusses government corruption in his blog as well as a number of other URLs until April 1. By April 4, however, the botnet was launched on many popular Livejournal blogs and effectively caused the Web site to be inaccessible in Russia. The attacks rendered the Web site inaccessible in Russia on March 30 and April 4.