Is the Web the Newest Front Line?

Attacks on Georgian and Russian Web sites have made the Internet a battlefield

By Stuart Fox Posted 08.13.2008 at 4:31 pm 7 Comments

A New Front Members of the Georgian Army in 2002. US Air Force

As the actual ground combat between Russia and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia grinds to a halt, security and Web experts have begun to focus on what might have been a secret third front in the conflict: the Internet. With numerous Georgian government Web sites defaced or shut down, the virtual attacks that preceded the actual invasion may go down in history as the first war in cyberspace.

The first barrages began in the end of July, and consisted of denial of service attacks on the Georgian President’s Web site. A denial of service attack (DoS) involves shutting down a server by routing more traffic to the site than the machines can handle. These attacks are committed by bot servers, which constantly bombard the target site with service requests.

Those July disturbances turned out to be reconnaissance for the large scale attack that coincided with the ground invasion on August 11th. DoS attacks disabled Georgian government Web sites; first publicized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia Web site, which was forced to move to Google Blogs after its Georgia-based site was disabled. Additionally, the Bank of Georgia’s Web site was defaced with pictures of Georgia’s President juxtaposed with pictures of Adolf Hitler.

Finding out who is behind the attacks is more complex than it first appears. None of the attacks could be traced back to the Russian government directly, with most security experts attributing the implementation of the attacks to the innocuously named Russian Business Network (RBN). RBN is actually an organized crime front that has been linked to spreading malware, spamming, phishing, identity theft and even child pornography.

However, some experts disagree, with CNET.com reporting that the attacks might be the work of nationalistic private hackers, in effect, the Internet version of the Russia-backed militias that have been fighting alongside the Russian army in the ground war. DoS attacks against popular Georgian hacker forums and the publication of Georgian politician’s emails address for spamming seems to support this theory. For its part, Georgia has not been passive, with Georgian hackers launching their own DoS attacks against Russian news outlets.

Whether or not these attacks represent the Russian military acting against the Georgian government by proxy or ambitious nationalist hackers seizing an opportunity, these attacks clearly indicate that the Internet has become a battlefield.

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7 Comments

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Fionn

from Kenner, L.A.

08/13/08 at 4:54 pm

So if its the battle field why is Russia bombing the country?

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jojohoser

08/14/08 at 12:48 pm

Wasn't "The Internet Is a Battlefield" a song?

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highdobb

08/15/08 at 4:08 am

Well I guess there were many battlefields in a war before, now there really is one more version of one.

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reelectnoone

08/15/08 at 1:06 pm

Why is the internet important? Because we can not trust the main stream media with the full truth or facts any longer.

As in many other areas. The people have more work to do for themselves to dig out the facts. The internet has become the single most powerful tool available to the common man to do so.

Paul
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Web design and hosting since 1995
http://www.stuffdone.com
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schizflux

08/17/08 at 11:22 pm

It's hard to say what are the motives behind this phenomenon. My take is that it's a juvenile sport of a sort and purely symbolic. If we cannot trust the main media - as one the commentators suggested - why would one want to get the news from the government sites? They are perhaps even more biased as the news sources. I learned about Georgia attacking South Ossetia and Russian response to the atrocities in the blogs of people who live in the area. And this is the way to go. The importance of government Web sites is overrated. They are purely decorative sites to begin with. So I guess it's OK to paint them over from time to time.

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beldin

from kathmandu, kathmandu

10/18/08 at 12:27 am

schiz is right. I have lived in Russia for a number of years and its the people link that usually gives the right news and in any govt the govt sites are just a presence a facade. Anyway one should belong to the sheeple genus to swallow all the govt crap.

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Robert1234

08/30/09 at 1:24 am

Georgia was an incredible important military test, and the U.S. flunked. It's so-called stealth aircraft were spotted and shot down. The cyber protection we set up failed in minutes. Our detection did not detect. Our combat planes fled the battle field immediately upon approach by the SU-35's of the Russians. If you wonder why, check out the SU-35 on youtube. Oh, and the SU-47, now being offered for sale by Russia to nations strongly opposing the US expansion in eastern Europe and to the Middle Eastern nations like Syria, Lebanon, Iran and others. The U.S. always thinks it's got the leading edge military equipment but never has until after getting it's ass kicked. The real problem is that this time, there will be no opportunity to catch up. Check out those items. Oh, check out the SU-35 video at:
"http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt--hq_RTaThNI/sukhoi_su_30_mki_waltz_in_the_sky/"
and watch the thrust nozzles. NO other aircraft in the world can do that and it's the king of the air. India flys SU-35s and kicked ass in the 2008 "Red Flag" games. The judges said, for the Indians, "It was like clubbing baby seals." Our top aircraft suck, people. We need to recognize we're a generation behind Russia and China. On, China got their design from Isael. We'd paid them $29 BILLION DOLLARS for a design they then sold to China. Just who is our worst enemy? Perhaps it is us and our ally, Israel?