Evidence of Russian Cyberwarfare Against Georgia 316
An anonymous reader writes "In what seems to be a repeat of what happened in July, a few news sites have mentioned that there is evidence of a campaign against Georgia. For example, both the government's and the president's sites are inaccessible, among other official websites. For some analysis, the RBN Exploit blog demonstrates various traceroutes that have failed to several sites. They also claim that the RBN (Russian Business Network cyber-crime organisation) are behind the attacks, and that 'Many of Georgia's internet servers were under external control from late Thursday,' before the actual war began. Finally, according to this Twitter account of someone in Georgia (written in Russian), he claims that 'Russia has blocked access to Georgian websites from within Russia' (rough translation)."
How about a much simpler explanation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Georgia is a small republic with very little traffic to web resources under normal conditions. Now they are getting likely several orders of magnitude more traffic. And these are the consequences. But of course the "cyberwarfare" is much juicier piece for journalists to chew on.
No shit! (Score:4, Interesting)
"In what seems to be a repeat of what happened in July, a few news sites have mentioned that there is evidence of a campaign against Georgia."
A campaign against Georgia? You don't say! What tipped you off, the explosions? The Black Sea Fleet moving off the coast? The miles-long military convoys crossing into Georgian territory? The planes dropping bombs in populations centers?
Oh, the IP logs. Can't have a real war until Netcraft confirms it, I s'pose.
Re:Go Georgia! (Score:5, Interesting)
Note: not saying that what happened in Kosovo was all right by any means, my point is that the parallels between the two situations are entirely justified and they expose hypocrisy by the west. There is hypocrisy in the Russian position as well but at least they pay a lip service to preservation of territorial integrity (as per international law) in both cases.
Re:Lithuanian President's Website (Score:2, Interesting)
Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland -- where have I seen this list before?
Oh, that's right, it's the list of countries that had sucking up to US and taking political potshots at Russia as the cornerstone of their foreign policy since 1991. With such famous successes as celebrating Estonian Nazi volunteers (Estonia, obviously), providing torture camps for their new American friends (Poland), harassing Russians traveling between a small Russian exclave accessible only through their territory and the rest of Russia (Lithuania) and other similarly glorious achievements.
There are no good guys in this war. (Score:5, Interesting)
This may be hard for an American mind to grasp, but *there are no good guys here*.
Georgians are not good guys. Their goal is to militarily crush a national independence movement and to subjugate a people who hate the Georgians' guts. They've been planning this blitzkrieg operation for years (a nation doesn't increase its military spending by a factor of 30 if they aren't planning to invade somebody.) They cynically violated ceasefire terms, used massed artillery to bombard residential areas (killing ~1400 Ossetian civilians in one day), and were ethnically cleansing Ossetian villages. Now that their military effort has failed, they've launched a massive propaganda offensive to convince ignorant westerners that white is black and that a nation that launched an offensive war is somehow a victim.
But Russians ain't good guys either. Instead of trying to limit the killing, it looks like they are escalating the conflict by supporting the Abkhazians in Kodori. They are cynically using the excuse of protecting Ossetians from genocide to conduct a massive bombing campaign against Georgia's military infrastructure. And Russia has neither the desire nor the technological capability to limit collateral damage from its bombs.
What you are seeing is, essentially, a small bully being bullied by a bigger bully.
Re:The Spark (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1991, when Georgia seceeded from the soviet union, a civil war followed in which these two provinces separated themselves from Georgia.
Historically, when a province or state seceeded from another country, there has rarely been unanimous agreement as to exactly where the new border should be. Take as an example a certain secession attempt in the western hemisphere in 1861.
Quite often the province borders aren't drawn along ethnic lines, sometimes they're even completely arbitrary. For example the borders between Croatia and Serbia and Bosnia were the one time border between the Austrian and Turkish empires.
In the last two decades, a number of provinces have seceeded from larger eastern european countries, and every time the international community ("the west") was quick to recognize the independence, and the new borders exactly as the breakaway province claimed them, disregarding any claim by the other side as imperialism.
The war in Bosnia for example was a result, as a large chunk of the new country felt more Serbian than Bosnian, and attempted to break away from Bosnia by military means.
More such conflicts (and probably wars) are almost certain, as about 15 million Russians live in former Soviet republics (up to 30% of the population in some), many of whom presumably would prefer to be part of Russia.
The same situation took place in the countries of the present EU as nation states took form in the 19th century, which was followed by about 100 years of terrible wars, and ultimately settled by ethnic cleansing and assimilation politics on a massive scale. (15 million ethnic Germans were deported from central and eastern Europe after WW2, for example, forever ending any German territorial claims)
Re:There are no good guys in this war. (Score:3, Interesting)
Weeeelll....actually it's more like Russia has been planning this for years. Those Ossetian peaceniks you talk about opened fire across the "border" at Georgian villages, knowing Georgia had vowed to protect their territory. Of course they wouldn't have done this without knowing Russia had an invasion plan ready.
Or do you really believe a country whose leadership insists that "we can't control this, our volunteers have taken action", while fighter jets and bombers are flying about and tank columns are rolling in.
The best "proof" for anything is Russia's continued threats to all of its neighbours, whether to attack the Czech Republic or Poland over any planned missile shield, attack Georgia if they dared join NATO, attack the Baltic States for pretty much the same reason as Georgia now - "mistreatment" of russian citizens living there.
Russia is trying to set a precedent here - if our citizens are living in another sovereign nation, we reserve the right to use military force to act in their interest. While the good folks of Brighton Beach likely don't have much to worry about, Russia's neighbouring countries do.
Re:How about a much simpler explanation? (Score:4, Interesting)
Please read the news once in a while. Russia has launched cyberattacks on smaller neighbors before, most notably Estonia. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberattacks_on_Estonia_2007 [wikipedia.org]
By all accounts, Russia and Georgia are both to blame for what's going on here. But if you look at the pattern of behavior in the past few years... well, we've seen Russian dissidents poisoned with radioactive sushi, Russian journalists assassinated, an opposition leader in the Ukraine poisoned with dioxin... Jesus H. Christ, wake up and smell the coffee already. Maybe we don't think we're in the next phase of the Cold War, but Putin pretty clearly does, and he's acting accordingly.
America has enough enemies in the world that we don't need to make another one out of Russia. And as an American, I don't see any real reason that the United States and Russia can't be allies, rather than enemies. But that doesn't matter; Putin quite clearly thinks otherwise, and that is the only thing that matters. Russia sees the West as a threat, and they are treating us (and the Western-allied Georgia) accordingly. This is not just Russia vs. Georgia, this is Russia vs. Georgia + EU + USA. And the question is, what are the EU and the USA going to do about it? The last thing the United States needs is more conflict and war, of course. But appeasing tyrants is generally not a good move, either.
IT.Sec.Con Insight (Score:2, Interesting)
president.gov.ge took down it's MySQL database temporarily during the attack and changed it's front page during the downtime as an effort to reduce automated attacks upon it's initial page.
The National Bank of Georgia took down it's images temporarily when it was attacked producing text-only pages. It has since restored them.
There is no access to The Ministry of Foreign Affair's website, I have no inside information on what occurred but when the attacked start I do know they purposely turned off web services at some stage, whether or not they have restored them I do not know.
- Ð'ÐÐÑоÑ
Bush Doctrine in Action - Russian Style! (Score:1, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine [wikipedia.org]
Excerpt
Later it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate (used to justify the invasion of Iraq), a policy of supporting democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating the spread of terrorism, and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way.
Georgia blank on Google Maps? (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone else seeing Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan as blank areas with no towns or roads in Google Maps? The change happened sometime in the last few hours.
Re:How about a much simpler explanation? (Score:3, Interesting)
"But appeasing tyrants is generally not a good move, either."
The problem the U.S. has here is much of the world thinks Bush is a tyrant. Because he invaded Iraq under false pretenses, and condoned torturing people he doesn't really have any moral high ground to stand on at this point. I recall when Bush and the U.S. started lecturing Putin about issues with elections in Russia he shot back that the elections in the U.S., after irregularities in Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Alabama, weren't anything to be bragging about.
From reading the online newspapers today it appears the Georgians are more than a little unhappy that the U.S. and NATO are apparently going to let Russia swallow Georgia whole if they feel like. Has Bush even managed to tear himself away from the Olympics yet? Putin rushed back from the Olympics to the border with Georgia and is apparently hands on commanding the invasion. I'm guessing this is going to be another round of George being asleep at the switch, and caught with his pants down during a crisis, while one of his most faithful friends and allies is destroyed. Of course there is a question what he could do about it if he wanted to. The U.S. military is stretched so thin, that other than air power and nuclear threats, there is nothing he could do to stop this invasion.