[LINK] Georgia gets allies in Russian cyberwar Was: [war, real and virtual]

[David Boxall]

<http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2223776/georgia-gets-allies-russian-cyberwar>

> Georgia is gaining allies to resist online attacks 
> <http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2223695/georgia-accuses-russians>, 
> which it says are the work of Russian hackers.
>
> Two members of Estonia’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) are 
> heading to Georgia to help deal with the attacks according to Baltic 
> Business News. The attacks in Georgia are reportedly similar to those 
> that took place 
> <http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2190172/estonia-under-cyberattack> 
> against Estonia last year.
>
> Poland and Estonia have both also offered web space to the Georgian 
> government to host official pages.
>
This stands out:
> “The use of cyber attack assets in conjunction with kinetic military 
> operations in the current crisis now stands among the most significant 
> developments ever seen in the field of information security or cyber 
> conflict studies.”
I guess "kinetic military operations" means stuff gets thrown around at 
high speed by people in uniform.

-- 
David Boxall | Drink no longer water,
| but use a little wine
| for thy stomach's sake ...
| King James Bible
| 1 Timothy 5:23

On 12/08/2008 at 3:26 PM stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> 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.