Russia’s Cyberwar Against Georgia
by John Little on 11/08/2008I tried various Georgian government sites early in the conflict without luck. The DDoS attacks started very early and continue:
Galrahn at Information Dissimenation says that “Russia appears to have targeted the .ge domain for specific government websites, and are pounding the Georgian military networks, but other websites in Georgia in org, net, and other domains are still up, sporadically.” The Washington Post adds that “the Caucasus Network Tbilisi — key Georgian commercial Internet servers — remain under sustained attack from thousands of compromised PCs aimed at flooding the sites with so much junk Web traffic that they can no longer accommodate legitimate visitors.”
The media loves the whole concept of “cyberwar” but there’s nothing really surprising here. In warfare you attack your enemy’s ability to communicate. Today the Internet plays a central role in communication and therefore war. Wired and Slashdot both have more on this topic.
Update:
Russia Today claims to be the victim of attacks originating from Georgia:
In the course of the last 24 hours RT’s website (www.russiatoday.com) has endured numerous DDoS attacks, which have made it unavailable for some time. Channel’s security specialists say the initial attack was carried out from an IP-address registered in the Georgian capital Tbilisi. RT’s team apologizes for the inconvenience and gives a list of comprehensive external resources on the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict which can be used, should the attacks continue.
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