**A Georgian blogger at the centre of a co-ordinated attack against Facebook and Twitter has asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to hold an inquiry.**The blogger, known online as Cyxymu, said he was targeted for “telling the truth about the Russian-Georgian war”.
The attack forced down Twitter for two hours on 6 August, and Cyxymu now wants Mr Medvedev to find the culprits.
Despite the blogger’s claims, security researchers have said they doubt the attack was state-endorsed".
As well as Twitter and Facebook, search giant Google and blogging platform Live Journal - all sites where he the blogger holds accounts - were also affected by the attack.
In his letter to Mr Medvedev, the blogger, whose real name is Georgy, appealed for an investigation into the attack, during which the affected websites were bombarded with data requests until they crashed.
“Your special services are able to trace the persons involved in this case and organisers of this attack,” he wrote.
"And your court, the most humane court in the world, is able to find and punish them. "
‘Big surprise’
He also said that last week’s denial-of-service attack was not the first against his blog.
In October 2008 his blog at mylivejournal.com was hit and did not function again until May this year.
In his letter, Georgy said that “the entire world is speaking of the Russian hackers working for the Russian Federation government”.
Those hackers were able to prevent millions of people gaining access to world famous social networking sites merely “to block one blogger” because of his “unpleasant and unacceptable” position, he suggested.
Georgy has posted a series of videos and blog entries criticising Russia for its conduct during the five-day conflict with Georgia a year ago over its disputed region of South Ossetia.
Last week he expressed his surprise at the fallout from his blogging, saying: “It’s a big surprise to me that my blog has meant that 250m people have not been able to enter Facebook.”
However, Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos told BBC News last week there was no suggestion the attack against the blogger was state-endorsed.
“It was almost certainly an individual who took objection to his blogs,” Mr Cluley said.
“They took internet vigilantism into their own hands to try to blast him off the web, but in the process blasted Twitter off instead.”