And You Thought Friendster Was So 2003

Defense Tech’s Kevin Coleman reports on quiet battles between the Iranian regime and the opposition to control access to various social-media Websites:

President Ahmadinejad took decisive steps and basically turned off the Internet in Iran for about an entire day. His action, blocked access to information being distributed by the opposition party and the coordination of the cyber revolt activities. The social outrange was collected, focused and targeted into a political weapon and the enabling technology was the Internet. Many find it hard to believe a 500,000 node DDoS attack army could be assembled that fast without prior planning. Some have speculated that outsiders may have had a hand in the rapid assembly of the cyber capabilities used in the post election cyber attacks. Given the massive distributed sources of attack, it is hard to believe this could have been pulled together in a few short hours.

Regime-attacked sites include Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, BeDo, Friendster, Hi5, LinkedIn (groups), Ning, Classmates and Reunion.