[LINK] war, real and virtual

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Hi all,

Have a look at http://www.parliament.ge

It's the Georgian Parliament website, now featuring Adolf Hitler.

So the current and very hot Russia vrs Georgia war has gone virtual. 

It seems *patently* obvious that if we ever get into another scuffle,
probably anywhere in the world these days, our IP networks will come
under an immediate & sustained attack. I would bet that if our middle
east involvement was to have commenced now, instead of several years
ago, our significant IP systems would also be down right about now.

I do hope our networks are sufficiently hard, and, that the prospect of
an IP-less Aus government, and industry, will give pause for cool heads.

Our next armed involvement nearly anywhere (except maybe Tonga) will be
fought out on the virtual home front as well as where-ever in the field.


<http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/georgian-websites-forced-offline-
in-cyber-war/2008/08/12/1218306848654.html>

Georgia and security experts have accused Russian state-sponsored hackers 
of breaking into Georgian government and commercial websites as part of a 
cyber war to supplement Russia's military operations in South Ossetia.

- Official websites hacked
- 'Cyber warfare campaign'
- Site moved

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's official website, as well as the 
websites of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defence, the 
central government site and various commercial sites, have all been forced 
offline over the past week.

The Georgian Parliament website, parliament.ge, has been defaced by 
the "South Ossetia Hack Crew". The site's content has been replaced with 
images comparing Saakashvili to Adolf Hitler.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was forced to set up a blog on Google's 
Blogger service as a temporary site while it battled to resurrect its 
official homepage. News site Civil.ge followed its lead, claiming its 
servers were under permanent attack.

Jart Armin, a researcher who publishes a blog tracking the movements of 
the Russian Business Network (RBN) - a group of state-sponsored hackers - 
called the flare-up a "full cyber siege of Georgia's cyber space" by the 
RBN.

Armin said Georgian internet servers were controlled by foreign attackers 
and internet traffic to them was being redirected to servers in Moscow.

At the time of writing, president.gov.ge, mfa.gov.ge and mod.gov.ge were 
back online but the central government site, government.gov.ge, was still 
down. The President's site has been moved to US servers.

"A cyber warfare campaign by Russia is seriously disrupting many Georgian 
websites, including that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," the Georgian 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a statement on its temporary blog.

The blog has allowed Georgia to spread information to mainstream media and 
the West, knowing it would be difficult for the hackers to target Google.

Security experts claim Georgia's websites were the subject of 
sustained "denial-of-service" attacks, which flood the target with visits 
in order to overload it and knock it offline.



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