Remember when we thought we'd won the Cold War?

New things and new ways to break things. Russians, in all fairness, have historically proved to be cutting-edge breakers...

The meltdown that left 45 million Twitter users unable to access the service on Thursday came in two waves and was directed at a single blogger who has voiced his support for the Republic of Georgia in that country’s continuing conflict with Russia.

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Twitter was overwhelmed by the attack and its site was paralyzed for hours. Facebook, certain Google Web sites and LiveJournal had better defenses, but still faced temporary problems.

It’s possible that Cyxymu was targeted because the user was so active online, Ms. Jones said. “They knew where to find him,” she said. “Some of the others might not have been so overt.”

The attacks coincided with the one-year anniversary of the Russia-Georgian conflict. “When the conflict started a year ago, there were various denial-of-service attacks coming from both sides, attacking Web sites.”