Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks - NYTimes.com
Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks - NYTimes.com I held off a while before blogging about this to see a bit of the analysis come in after the initial flush of opinion. It seems clear that a cyber attack of some kind did take place against Georgia. It also seems clear that it was Russian in origin. It further seems clear that it was timed to coincide with the Russian land assault. It is an interesting characteristic of cyber warfare that it is almost impossible to determine if this was actually government controlled, directed, sponsored, or simply a independent sympathetic effort. It is hard to rule out a scenario like support from patriotic cyber criminal organizations. There is at least some evidence that such a scenario played at least some part in the attack. Because Georgia is such a minimally wired country, the actual impact of the attacks was negligible. I would assume there are few significant connections between Georgia and the rest of the Internet. If so, they should have been able to unplug from the rest of the net while deciding how to react. A country like the US or a nation in Europe or much of Asia would be much harder pressed to disconnect because of the tremendous diversity of international interconnections. Such countries are also much more vulnerable because they rely on the Internet for many critical functions. Additionally, enormous economic damage would result from such an attack.
- Lance Cottrell
November 18th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
That’s interesting about the conflict with Georgia. Given the origin and timing of the cyber attack, it’s fairly obvious that the attack was official. Just so people understand, the Russians were in South Ossetia through a European Union sanctioned mission. While the news here indicated that the Russians attacked first, the rest of the world knew that it began with aggression by Georgia. http://tinyurl.com/5mu7u8
That doesn’t excuse anything the Russians did or the Georgians, for that matter.
Having said that, it would be of real interest to know when the cyber attack took place, when it began. The Times of London reported on 8/8/2008 that “Tbilisi (Georgia) launched an overnight offensive to regain control over the breakaway province of South Ossetia.” Times of London.
That would place the offensive some time on 8/7. On 8/7 at 17:17, Civil, a Georgian news wire, quoted a South Ossetian official as saying, “Georgia has launched a large-scale military aggression against South Ossetia.” a at 17:17 on 8/7.
If the cyber attack took place any time prior to 8/7, that might indicate some priori intent by the Russians to go after Georgia, needing only an indicent to provoke such a move. If it took place after “the overnight offensive” by Georgia, that European media pegs as the start of the war, it might indicate that the cyber attack was in reaction to the ground attack.
If you have this information - the timing of the cyber attack - it would be great to have that or a link. I’m interested because I wrote about this some time ago.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0809/S00087.htm
Great products - NetShield, etc. Sorry about the spyware product, although your explanation makes perfect sense. I hadn’t used it in a while since “Shield Delux” is my main protection but when I did today, it picked up a bunch of nasty stuff that Shield hadn’t.
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:56 am
Very interesting thoughts. I have not had the chance to do the research you suggest, but would certainly be interested if anyone has that information.