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."
It was just too dang hot for them to see it coming.
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.
I heard all this talk about a war between Russia and Georgia and got kind of anxious, but itturns out it's just a cyberwar. The media really should stop sensationalizing these things like that.
It seems that Georgian military units are pinging off the map, while russian units are enjoying first shot capability.
This has allowed the Russians to clear each map easily, with little resistance.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I first heard about this by reading an article titled "Evidence of Russian Cyberwarfare Against Georgia". It was posted on this site you might have heard about called /. (or Slashdot).
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
A grey hat, in the hacking community, refers to a skilled hacker who sometimes acts legally, sometimes in good will, and sometimes not. They are a hybrid between white and black hat hackers. They usually do not hack for personal gain or have malicious intentions, but may or may not occasionally commit crimes during the course of their technological exploits.
A black hat hacker would hack the firewall in order to get credit card numbers.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I don't know, dude. This is the Caucasus we're talking about. Lots of Caucasians there.
The opposite of progress is congress
That's a terrible idea - the phishers would be all over that. Anyone who needs to override DNS should know how to do so themselves - and a IP-based address is useless for long-term use, so you wouldn't be able to use them in stable links either.
I don't know, dude. This is the Caucasus [wikipedia.org] we're talking about. Lots of Caucasians there.
Yah, but they're mostly self-loathing caucasians, as opposed to white supremacists.
Here are a couple of screenshots (in a language other than English)
It's Georgian. In language and alphabet.
Cyberwar is global. What's to stop widespread vigilante justice against either side? What's to stop US or Chinese hackers from joining in independently to fight on the side they choose? When does blogspot or the Estonian site become the target?
I've listened to NPR yesterday about this, and the best experts have been able to say so far is that it is cyber VANDALISM. No major infrastructure has been crashed. Hospitals and such have not been imploded.
There is even speculation that Georgians themselves crashed/trashed their OWN systems to exploit the current bad image Putin (yes, PUTIN is calling the shots, not Medvedev. Moreover, and ironically, a US-based outfit in, guess where... GEORGIA (yes, the state) offered and took on the hosting for the Georgian President's web site. Guess what? It wasn't working out. It was still being crashed/taken down. So, another party (seems to be Estonia) is helping out.
I really fracking wish some of these sensationalistic headers on Slash would get slashed.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/2008/08/august_12th_show.html
Now, given that Putin/Medvedev claim Russian advances are immediately ceasing (purportedly) there really isn't "cyber warfare" going on, isn't there? If things continue, or escalate, THEN it might truly eclipse the bounds into "warfare".
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Just put "192.168.1.5 www.somesite.com" in /etc/hosts, or whatever the Windows equivalent is.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
Just put "192.168.1.5 www.somesite.com" in /etc/hosts, or whatever the Windows equivalent is.
It's actually /etc/hosts, believe it or not.
Well, or something like C:\Windows\System32\etc\hosts. But the format is identical, save for maybe using \r\n instead of \n (and I'm not even sure about that).
Must be all that BSD code in the Windows IP stack.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Georgia: c2c?
Russia: Yes, I would love to cyber
Georgia: 2 late lol..just got 3 msgs
Russia: Die
Georgia: ?
Russia: I winnuke you
Georgia: OH *@#@)(! I am still running win95!
Actually it's Windows\System32\drivers\etc (the file is hosts without any extension). On Vista UAC may block your access to the file by default as well, the easiest way to get around this (aside from disabling UAC altogether) is to run your editor with elevated privileges.
Oh wait, you meant the other Georgia.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
...service denies you!
I think the claim that Georgia is censoring traffic is probably misleading.
What's happening is that they've got incoming DoS-attacks, and have probably nullrouted quite a few russian IP-ranges. This probably includes quite a few DNS servers, making DNS lookups fail.
I haven't taken the time to _check_ any of this, but if you nullroute the DNS servers, of course DNS lookups will fail. If you're under a DoS, of course you nullroute quite a lot.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
I think it's safe to say they are black hats- they're deliberately, maliciously attacking other networks. The distinguishing feature isn't legality, it's the goal of the attacker.
Grey hats generally disregard the laws but don't want to cause harm. Black hats steal credit card numbers, deface servers, and generally bork things up. White hats do the same as black hats, but with the end goal of hardening systems.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
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.
You know you've arrived when your hat's gone to plaid.
Define "legally" in a war... when legality itself isn't really applicable anymore.
Now that's just a bit too cynical. War itself involves a lot of actions where the combantants will disagree about legality, but it is meaningful to call some of them "illegal" as a bystander.
For example, if a Georgian troop goes into Russia and kills a Russian troop by firing at him with a rifle, Russia would certainly love to characterize that as "murdering" (i.e. illegal killing of) a Russian citizen. But it's not (in and of itself) a "war crime".
There exist widely respected protocols for what a well-intentioned nation can do to conduct a war, such as the Geneva Conventions and U.N. mandates. They never ban ALL killing of people, and for good reason: if it were to say, "to conduct a just war, you must kill no one", then no nation would respect the authority of that enumeration of norms, and they'd just go back to whatever they were doing before, which could include targeting of civilians, torture, disguising as aid workers, etc.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Define "legally" in a war...
See Conventions, Geneva.
My blog
hmm...Russia....RED hat hackers?!? ehh? ehhh?? get it?!
Speaking of cyberwar... So, I google mapped Georgia (I'm reasonably good about knowing geography... but come on, Georgia? Sorry Georgians...) Anyway... I was rather disappointed to find that... there's nothing there. Really odd. Roads end, obvious cities aren't even labeled as cities. It's not like Google did a cursory mapping of it and skipped parts... it's just that aside from the border and the country name it doesn't exist. Also... good luck finding it by typing "Georgia" in google maps. The country isn't even an option. I had to wander through eastern Europe until I got over by Turkey before I saw it.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
here : http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=714632 these are the people working at that atlanta web host, hosting georgian president's site from russian bastardiness. they havent had enough sleep in the few days but they made a fight of principle out of it.
Read radical news here
hmm...Russia....RED hat hackers?!? ehh? ehhh?? get it?!
So... red hats... a bunch of old ladies?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Nope, just a paid for version of Fedora http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RHEL
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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.
You mean the stuff you'll be tried for in Den Hague when you break it, unless you have bigger guns than the rest of the planet so they don't dare to pull you to the court?
Yeah, I'm sure Russia is afraid of that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't know, dude. This is the Caucasus [wikipedia.org] we're talking about. Lots of Caucasians there.
Yah, but they're mostly self-loathing caucasians, as opposed to white supremacists.
You think white supremacists don't loathe themselves? I always figured those who have to denigrate others to feel better about themselves must have a pretty low opinion of themselves to start with.
Infuriate left and right
A foreign power is using illegally obtained U.S. resources (compromised PCs) to attack another power. I believe that is a serious breach of international law. It would be no different t
meh
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here. If you know the IP address you're trying to reach, you can just type the IP into the address bar.
We need a "hat colour" for a war hacker. This will become a lot more common in the information age.
Any takes on a good colour?
Digital Camo of course. Sheesh, what's your excuse? Your UID isn't THAT high.
Infuriate left and right
Why don't russian just link some Georgia's site in slashdot? The chances of service survival after a slashdot rampage are minimal.
They are 'asshat' hackers.
Russia behaves like an organized crime gang on a superpower scale. There is little mercy or love left in the Russian soul.
That being said, Georgia made a serious, serious blunder when it attacked the Ossetien separatists.
Not as many niggers as US Georgia.
In Soviet Georgia, Blacks lynch you.
Yes, you specifically.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"Russians, Georgians, and Niggers are all sub-human."
History of the Internet, Chapter 5: David Duke gets his first email address, Slashdot account.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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.
When I was a kid, my best friend's dad was a WW II Navy vet, one that saw a lot. He scoffed at the very notion of "rules of war".
As he put it, "If I have an 'illegal' weapon, and an enemy is trying to kill me... guess what... I'm using the illegal weapon".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
South Ossetia is a Georgian province. Population there is NOT Russian, but they were given Russian passports around the time when Georgia split off from Soviet Union. The region was mostly governed by Russians, and they supported it with weapons and fueled separatist movement there. And there were provocations from Russian/Ossetian side before Georgia invaded last Friday. See August 1-7 buildup on Wikipedia article. Same thing with Abkhazia. Russian occupation and annexation of Abkhazia was completely unwarranted and unprovoked- Georgia did nothing to Abkhazia.
In general, this is just a part of The Great Game. Divide your enemies, make Abkhazians, Ossetians, Georgians hate each other and fight each other, and rule them all. But I still think that Russia provoked this war, and they were preparing for this war long time before Georgian strike on Friday. Russia has been meddling and fighting in Caucasus for hundreds of years now. They have been meddling with other neighboring countries as well. And if the world doesn't stand up to their bullying, this will make Russia feel invincible and beyond punishment. I wonder who would suffer next. Ukraine? Baltic states? Poland? Chechnya is still occupied, and genocide there is still ongoing. Russia never cared and will never care for lives of people, their own citizens or not, nor for peace.
And don't get me started on peacekeepers. Russia having "peacekeepers" in Ossetia is similar to Nazi Germany having peacekeepers in Poland.
--Coder
I humbly propose a new term for hackers who engage in warfare: "steel hat".
"Piter, too, is dead."
To quote my army trainer, rules of engagement exist for Generals and other cushion-poopers who don't have to worry about bigger problems. Like, for example, bullets.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why are you calling Russians bastards?
On the night of August 7th/8th, Saakashvili launched an operation to "restore constitutional order" in South Ossetia. He started by bombing the crap out of Tskhinvali using Grad rocket launchers, resulting in hundreds of dead Ossetian civilians (1500 according to Ossetian and Russian numbers). Why wasn't there an outcry over their deaths in the western media? Whenever the Ossetian death toll was called it was qualified as unconfirmed. However, when a Russian plane missed a military target on August 9th and 5 Georgian civilians died in Gori it was all over the news.
Perhaps it's best to avoid name calling, and re-evaluate the reasoning behind your prejudiced attitude towards Russians. They aren't the bad guys every time you know.
Georgia attacked separatists and criminals within their own borders. Yes, it was a stupid move, but all that different from Russia attacking Chechyneyan rebels and criminals within its own borders.
Granted, there were a lot of soldiers there as "peacekeepers", and a lot of people who had been given Russian passports (not really Russian citizens). It was a stupid move of Georgia to start a crackdown on the separatists when it was obvious it was in a precarious situation. Don't poke the bear in the eye if you want to keep your finger.
But the Russian response was amazingly out of proportion. Tanks crossed into a sovereign country, beyond even the disputed South Ossetia region in question, without any delay for negotiations or even an hour or two of threatening postures. This is not like US invading Iraq after months of rhetoric and misinformation to the UN and a small bit of planning.
Of course there was a cyber war. Russia tried it against Estonia. I don't think the government itself was behind it, as it's an ultimately futile gesture. But the government certainly took no action to find or punish whoever was behind the cyber attacks there. Probably better to wink at the script kiddies aimed against outside countries than to have them focus on targets at home.
The US has been "advising" the Georgians until a few weeks ago, last month they had a thousand guys there "training".
You know what the US was advising Georgia? Not to pick a fight that they can't win with Russia.
just shelling the city hard, but they couldn't take it
They actually did take it, which is why the Russians rolled in.
So what is over the top about fighting back if you get attacked,
Russia was not directly attacked. Some of their "peacekeepers" who were occupying part of Georgia were killed during the blitz. Now here's where the finger-pointing starts.
How about if it was your relatives that got wasted by the Georgians being "advised" by the US?
That depends... am I pro-Georgian or pro-Russian? I could probably find a way to blame this on the separatists or the Georgians depending on my stance.
There is no such thing as a "fair fight" in war, you fight to win, period.
I'm all for that, but... why are the Russians in this fight? It's not their fight - they have actually worked very hard to keep international peacekeepers out. I say it is ulterior motives.
The US not only invaded a nation and took it over that had a peripheral involvement in the 9-11 attacks that killed 3,000 people, they went ahead and attacked and took over another nation that had absolutely nothing to do with it and have killed who knows how many people, many thousands, figures vary wildly, based on lying about the involvement.
Two points. One, the actions of the US have no bearing on whether what Russia did is right or not. Second, Russia has managed to de-facto annex part of Georgia, even giving Georgians Russian citizenship. Iraqis and Afghans do not get US passports, and the US has no intention of running either country.
, the US and the Georgians screwed up bad
The US advised Georgia NOT to provoke the Russians. But I agree that Georgia screwed up. That said, while the Russian response was to be expected, it was still way over-blown.
Of course they are desperately trying some fast quick lies in the press like they always do
Both sides are guilty of this. Russia was claiming that "their citizens" had been killed, which is garbage - and there was no end to Georgia's exaggerations either.
absolute dullest of the stupid and the fanatical flag wavers
Both countries have no shortage of those people.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The WSJ editorial board wrote, "No matter who fired the first shot last week in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia, Moscow is using the separatist issue as an excuse to demolish Georgia's military and, if possible, depose its democratically elected government. Russian forces moved ever deeper into Georgia proper Monday. They launched a second front in the west from another breakaway province, Abkhazia, and took the central city of Gori, which lies 40 miles from the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. These moves slice the country in half and isolate its ports, most of which Russia has bombed or blockaded. Moscow dismissed a cease-fire drawn up by European nations and signed by Georgia.
Russian bombers have also hit residential and industrial areas, making a mockery of Moscow's charge that Georgia is the party indiscriminately killing civilians. Russian claims of Georgian ethnic cleansing now look like well-rehearsed propaganda lines to justify a well-prepared invasion. Thousands of soldiers and hundreds of tanks, ships and warplanes were waiting for Mr. Putin's command."
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime
Clearly, the US ignoring this concept has been going on long enough that people are returning to the Bad Old Days when "there's a war on" meant "we can commit any atrocity we want, fuck you".
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Hmm, the preseident's site seems to be down now, I guess they could handle the attacks, but not slashdot. I wonder if Slashdot should be considered a WMD?