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 also am not surprised. Thousands of people have been killed in good old fashion bombings and shootings, why wouldn't they resort to other types of warfare and propaganda. I'm just surprised they're not doing more. I'm sure if Russia were inclined to, they could do more serious damage to Georgian communications infrastructure. In war, many of peoples rights are disrupted, including freedom of information.
"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.