Reports have surfaced suggesting that today's denial-of-service (DOS) attack on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites was actually an attack on a single user, Cyxymu, a pro-Georgian blogger from Tbilisi.

The DOS attack apparently took Twitter's 30+ million users completely down for over two hours, while slowing Facebook and other websites, including YouTube, Live Journal and Google.  A senior officer at Facebook, Max Kelly, told CNET the attack was likely aimed at a single user "to keep his voice from being heard," and was "a simultaneous attack across a number of properties."

Kelly indicated Facebook will continue to research the back end of the attack and take action against those responsible for it if possible.

Sources have suggested the method for crashing the social networking sites was joejobbing, getting users to click on links in spammed e-mails sent by automated bots.

Cyxymu, the user's handle, is the name of a town in Georgia.   The individual using the name who was the apparent target of the attack has identified himself to CNN as a 34-year-old Georgian blogger named "George."  He claims the attack  originated with hackers inside the Russian KGB.

The denial-of-service attack, while noteworthy, would not be the first such attack to arise from Russian-Georgian political tensions.  Both sides have engaged in cyber warfare since war erupted between the two former Soviet states exactly a year ago.  It appears the attack might have been timed to coincide with that anniversary.

Lenta.ru, a popular Russian-language news site based in Moscow, noted that the failure of the popular "mikroblogersky" site Twitter was recorded at 17:45 local Moscow time.