They say that the truth is the first casualty of war. Is well known that the side that controls information has a distinct advantage in any conflict, and the recent hostility between Russia and Georgia is a perfect example of how warring factions attempt to control or disable the lines of communication.
During the first few days of the conflict, unknown hackers initiated a coordinated attack on many Georgian web sites, including those used by government officials. “Sneaky” hacker tricks such as so-called “Denial of Service” Web attacks effectively crippled the Georgian government’s ability to communicate and provide information online to citizens about the ensuing hostilities.
It is clear that the attack is the work of a team of experienced hackers, and that it is politically motivated: even the official web site of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvilli was defaced, merging pictures of the leader with those of notorious dictators such as Adolph Hitler. After initially “vandalizing” the president’s web site, a second denial of service attack knocked the site completely off-line.
Besides the official government web sites, Russian hackers also coordinated attacks against Georgia news web sites and popular forums. Most of these sites were also rendered inaccessible during the first week of the conflict, making it difficult for Georgia citizens to get reliable information about what was going on.
While the exact origin of the attacks has not been verified, Internet security experts say that most of the IP addresses involved appear to be based in Russia, and many speculate that the attacks were funded by the Russian government.
The denial of service attacks against Georgian web sites actually began the day before the war broke out, which hardly seems coincidental. CRN.com is reporting that a Russian cyber crime syndicate has been named as responsible for the attacks, but so far there is no independent confirmation of this. Furthermore, it seems likely that whoever is responsible for the cyber terrorism against Georgia, the Russian government, or at least the KGB, would surely have been aware of such a widespread attack, and possibly even have funded it.
Of course, this is not the first time cyber attacks had been used in a real war. A series of smaller denial of service attacks took place in Estonia last year during a time of diplomatic conflict with Russia. Those attacks affected virtually all government and newspaper sites in the Baltic country.
But even the cyber attacks against Estonia pale in comparison to the coordinated effort now taking place against Georgia. Security experts theorize that such a large-scale and coordinated series of attacks could only have been possible with the assistance of the Russian government.
