Slashdot Mirror
Russia and Georgia Engaged In a Cyberwar
doctorfaustus writes "I first picked this up in bits and pieces last week off Daily Rotation. A more in-depth story is available at ZDNet, which reports 'a week's worth of speculations around Russian Internet forums have finally materialized into a coordinated cyber attack against Georgia's Internet infrastructure. The attacks have already managed to compromise several government web sites, with continuing DDoS attacks against numerous other Georgian government sites, prompting the government to switch to hosting locations to the US, with Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs undertaking a desperate step in order to disseminate real-time information by moving to a Blogspot account.' There is a question whether the computer work is being done by the Russian military or others. ZDNet's story offers further analysis of the attacks themselves and their origins. Some pretty good reporting." And reader redbu11 contributes the news that Georgia seems to be censoring access to all Russian websites, as confirmed by a Georgian looking glass/nslookup tool. The access is blocked on DNS level (Italy censored the Pirate Bay in the same way). Here are a couple of screenshots (in a language other than English) as of Aug 12th 5:40 pm: www.linux.ru nslookup — FAIL, www.cnn.com nslookup — OK.
ComputerWorld guy CWmike adds "In an intriguing cyberalliance, two Estonian computer experts are heading to Georgia to keep the country's networks running amid an intense military confrontation with Russia. Poland has lent space on its president's Web page for Georgia to post updates on its ongoing conflict with Russia. Estonia is also now hosting Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site."
ComputerWorld guy CWmike adds "In an intriguing cyberalliance, two Estonian computer experts are heading to Georgia to keep the country's networks running amid an intense military confrontation with Russia. Poland has lent space on its president's Web page for Georgia to post updates on its ongoing conflict with Russia. Estonia is also now hosting Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site."
I am all for freedom of the press... but these two countries are more or less at war right now (whether they should be or not is topic for another discussion).
It seems perfectly reasonable to me for one country at war with another to stop information flowing in from the enemy to the local populace.
This was not started by Russia.
Rather than getting into the "he did this, oh yeah, well he did this first" thing that will have us talking about Attila the Hun in short order... I'd just like to point out that Russia's latest response was pretty over-the-top.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Define "legally" in a war...
Seriously, black hat, white hat, grey hat or technicolor hat, it kinda loses meaning when legality itself isn't really applicable anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Wow, people just don't understand. The Internet is not down there. The packets get routed. It's the web servers that are being vandalized. The actual servers that host the actual content the Internet delivers. Hence, Garbage in, Garbage out.
Define "legally" in a war...
See Conventions, Geneva.
My blog
Though to be fair, if you go and kick a big, tough, strongman in the shins, you can't complain that he reacted disproportionally, and you're now in hospital.
Oh, no question there. Georgia was definitely reckless here.
but then they side with the Georgians against the mainly Russian South Ossestia.
I'm new to this as well and am still catching up on history. But I think that the Russians are more interested in control than they are in the welfare of 70,000 people in South Ossetia. They stuck their nose into a civil war, and then complain when their "peacekeepers" (who actually seem to run the government) get killed in the process. And then granting South Ossetians Russian citizenship when they are still part of Georgia? Well, that's pretty brazen. Even more brazen is claiming that now "Russians" are being killed in South Ossetia. They have effectively annexed South Ossetia... and now are grabbing even more of Georgia to "protect" it.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Isn't "causing harm" the idea behind a war? I mean, if I don't want to hurt you, your country, your economy, why bother going to war in the first place? So I can shoot people legally?
So is the attacking hacker a "black hat" and the defending hacker a "white hat"? I guess Russia would disagree.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Georgia never gave any Russians permission to act as "peacekeepers" in South Ossetia. If there were any armed Russian "peacekeepers" in South Ossetia they were operating illegally within another country's borders.
Georgia is _entirely_ within its rights to police any province within its borders. None of the allegations of genocide etc have even remotely been substantiated. Russia invaded Georgian territory, that's all there is to it.
South Ossetia is basically a tiny place, ie nowhere near the size of Kosova. If my town (Colchester, which has about the same population as South Ossetia) had a referendum, we might vote for independence from the UK. We wouldn't get it though.
because the USSR spent 70 years building a large economy out of those little states, and they moved a lot of people around to keep the piece. Then the 1990's hit, the wall fell and the USSR was carved up into little ethnic groups while NATO held a gun to Russia's head. Now that the US is over-committed it's a good time for Putin to grab some home points and get some wayward "states" back.