Report Links Russian Intelligence Agencies To Cyber Attacks

narramissic writes "A report released Friday by a group of cyber-security experts from greylogic finds it is very likely that the Foreign Military Intelligence agency (the GRU) and Federal Security Service (the FSB) directed cyber attacks on Georgian government servers in July and August of 2008. 'Following a complex web of connections, the report claims that an Internet service provider connected with the Stopgeorgia.ru web site, which coordinated the Georgian attacks, is located next door to a Russian Ministry of Defense Research Institute called the Center for Research of Military Strength of Foreign Countries, and a few doors down from GRU headquarters.' But Paul Ferguson, a researcher with Trend Micro who has reviewed the report, says it's a 'bit of a stretch' to conclude that the Georgia attacks were state-sponsored. 'You can connect dots to infer things, but inferring things does not make them so,' he said. One other interesting allegation in the report is that a member of the Whackerz Pakistan hacking group, which claimed responsibility for defacing the Indian Eastern Railway Web site on Dec. 24, 2008, is employed by a North American wireless communications company and presents an 'insider threat' for his employer."

Comments

cyber ATTACKS? I guess...

[gravos]

Well, cyber ATTACKS might be a bit overstated. I've been following the news fairly closely and as far as I can tell there's not been much aside from cyber VANDALISM. No major infrastructure has been destroyed, hospital operations have not been impeded, etc... It's just government and related websites that have been defaced and while that can interfere with productivity to some extent, it's hardly akin to warfare.

Not *that* much of a stretch

[PapayaSF]

Come on, of course it was state-sponsored. Russia clearly had the most motive of any country, and has a government with authoritarian leanings and a track record of things like assassinating critics. But set aside motive/means/opportunity and look at it this way: does anyone really believe that in today's Russia someone could mount a large, sustained cyber attack on a neighboring country without the government knowing about it? Does anyone think that Russia couldn't have stopped the attacks if they'd wanted to? It was just unconventional warfare with plausible deniability.

Re:Not *that* much of a stretch

[NorQue]

Bollocks. *Why* should the government of Russia know about any "cyber attacks" any more than any other government? They have a magic glass ball that tells em that? Americans have no idea about who's behind most of the big botnets themselves and they invented the internet. How should Russia know any more than the US American government?

Re:Not *that* much of a stretch

[JAlexoi]

You are enormously OVERESTIMATING Russian gov'ts power. It's probably has no more influence, than Afghanistan's gov't has influence over Afghanistan.

Oh no

[clarkkent09]

Why would the enemy government's websites not be legitimate targets in a war?

Re:Oh no

[shutdown -p now]

When it's not a legitimate war.

Re:Oh no

[Gorshkov]

Anything of the opposing government would be a legitimate target, yes.
But how VALUABLE a target would it be? I'm guessing that in the middle of a foreign invasion, few citizens are going to be trying to visit a govt website to try to find out how much they have to pay for rover's dog license, renew their driver's license, or get another copy of their birth certificate.

Is is possible, or plausible, that the Russian govt was involved? Yes, absolutely.

Is it LIKELY that they were involved? I doubt it. When you're invading a foreign country, you have much more important things to worry about than disrupting people's ability to find out when the next school holiday is.

I would think that the people here would be very well aware of just how much damage can be done by a group of bored script kiddies.

Like this is a surprise?

[WindBourne]

The cold war never ended for either China or Russia. Both are still engaged in it. We (as in all citizens; not just the wests) just keep hoping for something different. China has moved the war to economic at this time, but is quietly building up nuke subs, as well as space based weapons. On the economic front, they have tied their money to the dollar, and the Euro. In addition, they have selective trade barriers. Basically, Japan is their largest import because they are hoping that in the future they will control them one way or another. Even now, they are pushing to be allowed to NOT have to control their CO2 or other pollution, while they expect all others in the west to control theirs (That is why I still say drop the cap/trade and move to a time incremental VAT tax on ALL goods based on Pollution).

Russia has EU by their energy demands. The best thing that EU could do is move off gas heating and power and move to geo-thermal HVAC. That would drop their MAIN dependency on Russia. In addition, it would stimulate their economy quickly. By moving to electric, then they can change out the production rather quickly to say Solar Thermal backed up by natural gas (later with thermal storage), Wind, geo-thermal, tidal (very possible in EU because of the high coastline to area ratio), etc and nukes.

Re:Like this is a surprise?

[guacamole]

The cold war never ended for either China or Russia. Both are still engaged in it.

The cold war never ended because we are engaging them. We sold weapons to Taiwan against China's objections. We have military bases in Korea, Japan, Vietnam who knows where else. Our navy ships and air force send out their patrols as close as about 100-200miles off Chinese coast. As long as such activity persists on the US part, China has a full moral right to arm itself to teeth. With regards to CO2 emissions, China's _per capita_ emissions are still like 1/5th of the US number. I am all for cap and trade, but China should be allowed a quota of about 3-5 times of the US one based on total population.

The cold war never ended?

[rs232]

"The cold war never ended for either China or Russia. Both are still engaged in it. We (as in all citizens; not just the wests) just keep hoping for something different"

It really did, some Neocons in the US administration, being nostalgic for the old days, are attempting to bring it back by provoking the Russians by putting missiles in Poland and US airbases in Kyrgyzstan.

The US promised the Russians that if they went capitalist, NATO would not expand east and the former Eastern block countries wouldn't join the EU. In both matters they lied. Now you've got a pissed off Russia with Putin in charge.