Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Hold on there pilgrim. Don't be rashly jumping to no conclusions.
Plausible deniability goes a long ways here on Slashdot. I mean after all, they're Russians so they're given the benefit of the doubt. Now if it was Americans being blamed then yeah, for sure, almost everyone on Slashdot would immediately concur that they were guilty without question.
When American police do something shady then the condemnation and outcry on Slashdot is instant and near universal. But when Russian secret police pick up a critic of the Russian government at the airport and fifteen minutes later he's found dying in front of a hospital with a bullet hole in his head, well that's clearly a situation where Slashdotters don't want to jump to any hasty, unwarranted conclusions.