Slashdot Mirror
Evidence of Russian Cyberwarfare Against Georgia
An anonymous reader writes "In what seems to be a repeat of what happened in July, a few news sites have mentioned that there is evidence of a campaign against Georgia. For example, both the government's and the president's sites are inaccessible, among other official websites. For some analysis, the RBN Exploit blog demonstrates various traceroutes that have failed to several sites. They also claim that the RBN (Russian Business Network cyber-crime organisation) are behind the attacks, and that 'Many of Georgia's internet servers were under external control from late Thursday,' before the actual war began. Finally, according to this Twitter account of someone in Georgia (written in Russian), he claims that 'Russia has blocked access to Georgian websites from within Russia' (rough translation)."
I'd cut access to any country I was preparing to wage war against... it's common sense to help stop communications to fifth columnists. Of course, they'll route around it. --Mike--
Everyone is making fun of the invasion of a democratic country?
Thats slashdot for ya i guess. Depends on which country does the invading.
"I have a bad feeling that this conflict is going to spread,"
You're young. People always get a little jittery when an invasion happens somewhere and they're not the ones behind it. Now you know how the rest of the world feels.
"catalyzing all the violence that has been the undercurrent of world politics in the past few years."
Except that, if you turn off the television from time to time, you'd see that things are still rather peaceful compared to recent history.
"A possible world war."
It's difficult to have a world war without two large international factions aligned against each other. It'd be difficult (to say the least) to determine common enemies in the smattering of brushfire regional wars we're seeing.
Heck, what we're seeing in Georgia right now stands out because it's just so damned old skool: using a fifth column to destabilize a neighbor to soften them up for some good ol' fashioned land-grabbing. You gotta give credit to Putin, he knows his stuff.
Time to root for the little country trying to get its own territory back under its own control.
Puting's claims of "genocide" are pathetic and would only work on the already brainwashed Russians themselves. Seeing these assholes trumpet their government's lies is just as scary as seeing Chinese bloggers' anti-Tibet postings.
They are trying to paint South Osetia as some sort of Kosovo, where the evil Georgians deserve to be punished the same way Serbians did. Except, unlike then, there is no genocide or "ethnic cleansing" (Saakashvili is much smart than that), and no country was giving Kosovars their citizenship left and right so as to be able to pretend, they are defending their own citizens. Lots and lots of South Osetian have gotten Russian citizenship in recent years — just for asking. Imagine, for just a second, America trying to annex Iraq this way — we would not even force Puerto Rico in!
If US is not careful, next year Russia will come up with a "good" claim to send tanks to Brighton Beach — plenty of Russian citizens there!..
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It seems unlikely. The political landscape doesn't look like what it did pre-WWI europe. For one thing, there totally isn't the whole tanglement of alliances that escalated the conflict. I think such a war would be impossible for another fundamental reason. Communications technology has shrunk the world to the point where it is inconceivable to allow that sort of thing to happen. Instantaneous foreign criticism would likely stop the violence from escalating, and global organizations like the UN would attempt to stop the fight (UN =/= league of nations in terms of uselessness, before anyone says anything). Besides, there's no sign of foreign involvement as of now so it seems highly unlikely that this will be little more than a burp.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." -Sir Winston Churchill. http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Sir_Winston_Churchill/ Sure, democracy kinda works. But it wasn't democracy that gave us the constitution, which in my eyes, is so much more important than a "majority vote". democracy, as soon as it gets down to simplicities, is 51% oppressing 49%. just to put that in words: the majority fucks over any minority as they please. over here in Europe, we're not even so sure that our representatives are actually acting on behalf of the 51%. What say you, America? as soon as the majority can be coerced (I study advertising, it really isn't that difficult), we're back to who has the most money and who can throw the best parties, sucking up to those people who donate the most money. ya, this ain't news. but too many act like they don't know this. anyhow, my favourite quote of the parent's link: "It is proposed that government can be successful, and even vastly superior, if it has the direct participation of all of the governed. Open source governance incorporates the best features of direct democracy and tempers the drawbacks by use of a superior participation model and community structure." Are we talking about a Grassroots Democracy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grassroots_democracy oh, I get it! it's a government that lets the populace take part in it's decisions! Kinda like how democracy is (supposed to be). Open source government is a government that listens to it's people.. in contrast to democracy (..?!) I'm not bashing you personally, parent, but democracy isn't the A & O it makes out to be. well, in soviet russia, I give you negative karma.
It's not about fate, it's about character.
there be no shelter here, the frontline is everywhere!
The Daily Mail is not known for being terribly honest. It's a tabloid. If the news isn't in at least two serious broadsheets from independent sources, or one broadsheet and either the BBC or ITN, then it should not be regarded as credible. (As for American news sources, I trust virtually nothing from any source. Most of it is reprinted from Reuters or some other news agency pool, probably misquoted, and then censored by the advertisers. If it's Fox, it's just really bad fiction.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No, Russia was not planning this for years - primarily because this war significantly weakens Russia's position. Russia's main goal is to keep Georgia out of NATO. To do so, all it had to do was sponsor the Ossetian and Abkhazian independence movements (nations with unrecognized de-facto independent provinces are not allowed to be NATO members). But now that Russia has sent an army brigade into South Ossetia, the Ossetian independence movement no longer looks genuine (some Western observers have compared it to a Russian land-grab), and as a result, there is now a good chance that Georgia will be let into NATO. Given that starting this war would make it much harder to achieve Russia's foreign policy goals, do you really think Russia would have wanted to start it?
The invasion of Ossetia was a very shrewd move on Georgia's part. Massive military retaliation was the least bad of several bad response moves that Russia had at its disposal.
The daily mail is the UK equivalent of Fox news by the way