Update on the cyberattacks on Georgia
August 14th, 2008
By JOE WINDISH, Technology Editor
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Yesterday afternoon Ars Technica’s Joel Hruska reported:
…several security experts have spoken up, and raised the question of whether or not the Russian government is actually involved. According to Gadi Evron, former Chief information security officer (CISO) for the Israeli government’s ISP, there’s compelling historical evidence to suggest that the Russian military is not involved. He confirms that Georgian websites are under botnet attack, and that yes, these attacks are affecting that country’s infrastructure, but then notes that every politically tense moment over the past ten years has been followed by a spate of online attacks.
Evan Ratliff, who I quoted Tuesday, reports on the new developments today:
[Gadi Evron] compares the latest first cyberwar ever to the Russia-Estonia event, and tentatively chalks it up to Russian partisans self-organizing the attack. That type of perpetrator would likely not feel bound by any cease-fire agreement, as it appears they are not.
Ratliff also points to ChannelWeb and quotes this from Information Warfare Monitor:
Active route hijacking by Russian hackers, redirecting traffic to Russian telecom operators. If confirmed it would suggest that Russia ISPs are capable of enforcing an information blockage against a “cyber-locked” Georgia. This now appears implausible.
Over at Slate, Evgeny Morozov tells us how easy it is to become a CyberWar soldier:
Not knowing exactly how to sign up for a cyberwar, I started with an extensive survey of the Russian blogosphere. My first anonymous mentor, as I learned from this blog post, became frustrated with the complexity of other cyberwarfare techniques used in this campaign and developed a simpler and lighter “for dummies” alternative. All I needed to do was to save a copy of a certain Web page to my hard drive and then open it in my browser…Once accessed, the page would load thumbnailed versions of a dozen key Georgian Web sites in a single window. All I had to do was set the page to automatically update every three to five seconds. Voilà…
After some more investigation, I unearthed two alternatives, one creative and one emotional. The creative option was to write my own simple program. Although my experience with software development is nonexistent, the instructions looked manageable. All I had to do was…
In less than half an hour, he had come up with two options that could potentially cause some damage. Next up:
I turned to the site StopGeorgia for help. This was the emotional option. Branding itself as a site by and for the “Russian hack underground,” StopGeorgia declared that it wouldn’t tolerate “aggression against Russia in cyberspace.” In addition to this militaristic rhetoric, the site offered a very convenient list of targets…
Through all of this he may have discovered the roots of the CyberWar:
Paranoid that the Kremlin’s hand is everywhere, we risk underestimating the great patriotic rage of many ordinary Russians, who, having been fed too much government propaganda in the last few days, are convinced that they need to crash Georgian Web sites. Many Russians undoubtedly went online to learn how to make mischief, as I did. Within an hour, they, too, could become cyberwarriors.
Where did that word “CyberWar” come from anyway? ArsTechnica’s Hruska again:
It was only after Estonia made its well-publicized (and ultimately inaccurate) accusations against Russia that such attacks began to be referred to as cyberwarfare instead of politically motivated hackers.
And why have these new attacks been classified as incidents of cyberwarfare, when so many attacks that came before them were not?
The fact that the alleged attacker is Russia, I think, explains much of this response.
RELATED: Our Air Force Halts its Cyber Command Program.
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Georgia (Country of FSU), War, Technology, Computers. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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