Fergie's Tech Blog

The Fourth Front: Russia's Cyber-Attack on Georgia

David J. Smith writes on Georgian Daily:

According to Tkeshelashvili, “DDoS attacks began in the weeks before the Russian invasion and continued even after the Kremlin announced that it had ceased hostilities.” The attacks blocked Internet communications, crippled Georgian government fileservers, defaced websites, established counterfeit sites and degraded telephonic communications, she said.

Private analysts add that fraudulent transaction attempts overwhelmed Georgian bank computers, spurring foreign commercial institutions to cut links with Georgia in self-defense.

Of course, one of the advantages of cyber-war is that it is hard to trace. But no one believes that a gaggle of Indonesian teenagers or Colombian narcotraficantes struck Georgia through the Ethernet just as Russian tanks prepared to strike through the Roki Tunnel.

Moreover, the attack was too well coordinated to come from Russian “hacktivists” alone, although many such individual malefactors took their cues from certain malicious Russian sites.

posted by Fergie @ 3/25/2009 11:48:00 PM