Several weeks prior to Russia’s invasion of Georgia, a virulent cyberwar was initiated on the internet infrastructure of Georgia. The goal was typical, disrupt and control communications between the government and the populace:
In the wake of the Russian-Georgian conflict, a week worth of speculations around Russian Internet forums have finally materialized into a coordinated cyber attack against Georgia’s Internet infrastructure. The attacks have already managed to compromise several government web sites, with continuing DDoS attacks against numerous other Georgian government sites, prompting the government to switch to hosting locations to the U.S, with Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs undertaking a desperate step in order to disseminate real-time information by moving to a Blogspot account.
Who’s behind it? The infamous Russian Business Network, or literally every Russian supporting Russia’s actions? How coordinated and planned is the cyber attack? And do we actually have a relatively decent example of cyber warfare combining PSYOPs (psychological operations) and self-mobilization of the local Internet users by spreading “For our motherland, brothers!” or “Your country is calling you!” hacktivist messages across web forums. Let’s find out, in-depth.
The attacks originally starting to take place several weeks before the actual “intervention” with Georgia President’s web site coming under DDoS attack from Russian hackers in July, followed by active discussions across the Russian web on whether or not DDoS attacks and web site defacements should in fact be taking place, which would inevitably come as a handy tool to be used against Russian from Western or Pro-Western journalists. The peak of DDoS attack and the actual defacements started taking place as of Friday:
“Several Georgian state computer servers have been under external control since shortly before Russia’s armed intervention into the state commenced on Friday, leaving its online presence in dissaray. While the official website of Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian President, has become available again, the central government site, as well as the homepages for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defence , remain down. Some commercial websites have also been hijacked.
The Georgian Government said that the disruption was caused by attacks carried out by Russia as part of the ongoing conflict between the two states over the Georgian province of South Ossetia. In a statement released via a replacement website built on Google’s blog-hosting service, the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “A cyber warfare campaign by Russia is seriously disrupting many Georgian websites, including that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
After defacing Mikheil Saakashvili’s web site and integrating a slideshow portraying Saakashvili as Hitler next to coming up with identical images of both Saakashvili and Hitler’s public appearances, the site remains under a sustained DDoS attack. It’s also interesting to point out that the an average script kiddie wouldn’t bother, or wouldn’t even understand the PSYOPs effect of coming up with identical gestures of both parties and integrating them within the defaced sites……
The implications of this are staggering…………..
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/wp-trackback.php?p=1670
