Fergie's Tech Blog

Russian Coder: 'I Hacked Georgia's Sites in Cyber War'

Noah Shachtman writes on Danger Room:

Government and independent investigators are still trying to figure out who, exactly, hit Georgia's websites during its August war with Russia. Now, one of the hackers who claims to be behind some of the cyberattacks is telling all.

When the online assaults against Georgia began, everyone from the Russian government to a defunct, Moscow-based criminal consortium was blamed. A recent, preliminary report from the "Grey Goose" collection of online sleuths alleged that nationalistic Russian hackers, working largely on their own, bore a great deal of responsibility for the cyberstrikes.

The account from Leonid "R0id" Stroikov, in the latest edition of Xakep ("Hacker") magazine, appears to confirm the Grey Goose hypothesis. In the article, Stroikov talks about how he hit the website of the Georgian parliament — and why he decided to do it.

Countries today, Stroikov writes, "actively use the Internet for transmitting their point of view." So when Stroikov's "peaceful drink of beer" was "unexpectedly interrupted with the news of the developing situation in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict," he decided to strike a blow for Russia in the information war.

posted by Fergie @ 10/25/2008 09:26:00 AM