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Georgia under Cyber Attack [Not The One In The USA]
latimes.com — Among the more disturbing aspects of Russia's invasion of Georgia is that it was accompanied by a wave of cyber attacks on Georgian government websites. The combination of electronic and physical punches illuminated how ill-prepared the world is for this new kind of warfare.
louiebaur- 240 diggs
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- hiPpymIck, on 08/17/2008, -2/+11FUD
since when has having your govt website defaced (the horror) qualified as a military cyber attack
"More fundamentally, the Internet was not designed to be secure. Its architecture was developed by a relatively small group of researchers who knew and trusted one another.
They didn't envision the Net becoming intertwined with commerce, manufacturing and the power grid, all of which are now to some degree vulnerable to cyber warriors.
The ultimate solution is to redesign the Net, striking a better balance between security and the free flow of information.
In the meantime, Georgia's experience serves as a warning to Internet users that war has been redefined to the detriment of civilians everywhere."
..and IMHO the LATimes would redesign the internet to the detriment of civilians everywhere..
dont they get it - the internets is only any good because its free- raimsb6, on 08/18/2008, -0/+2"since when has having your govt website defaced (the horror) qualified as a military cyber attack"
This article fails to mention that many Georgian sites we're under DDoS attack. Several Georgian government wesites were moved to servers in another countries, such as Poland and Estonia, so the rest of the world can access them. During the conflict it was impossible to reach any Georgian news site, there simply was no response most of the time.
Of course it is very hard to prove who is behind ddos attacks, whether the Russian government or just some Russian script kiddies.
- raimsb6, on 08/18/2008, -0/+2"since when has having your govt website defaced (the horror) qualified as a military cyber attack"
- sarge96, on 08/17/2008, -1/+5I don't understand why the United States doesn't have it's own cyber attack force. You hear a lot about Chinese hackers stealing US data and Russia devastating the net infrastructure of former Soviet Republics, but never about American attacks. There is absolutely no reason why America should not launch cyberattacks of it's own.
The way the internet is designed right now is, as the article mentions, profoundly insecure. The recent DNS vulnerability proves that. What it means, however, is that when the ***** hits the fan, defenses will ALL eventually fail. It's not a question of if, but when. A determined, prolonged attack (one that could be easily sponsored by a government) can beat any password, any firewall. We need an internet Mutually Assured Destruction policy - you wreck our internets, we wreck yours.- OpenRevolt, on 08/17/2008, -0/+5If the Americans did it, they would make it look like someone else was responsible because we're the "good guys" in black.
- synystar, on 08/18/2008, -1/+3From NPR way back in May: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story ...
Richard Clarke is the former chief counter-terrorism adviser to the NSA under the Bush administration. He's not an expert on cyber-terrorism and seems to have only enough knowledge about the subject to know that we are very vulnerable. But it's a good listen.- synystar, on 08/18/2008, -1/+3[...]
I'd hope that our government has people working on these problems already even if they aren't telling us about it -- if he knows, they know. In fact, I'd like to think that they will never tell anyone about it. We cry foul whenever we discover that "big brother" knows all... but we'd be "up ***** creek" if our information infrastructure suddenly collapsed. Unfortunately world economy now depends on the network.
- synystar, on 08/18/2008, -1/+3[...]
- sinuegoist, on 08/18/2008, -1/+7send in the Estonian cyber army! both of them!
- sfelton, on 08/18/2008, -0/+4Wow, the Russians are smart. Finally a new way to fight, digitally. But I don't see how this was really cyber war-fare or whatever they want to call it. Defacing isn't the same as completely taking down all the government servers/countries sites.
- Leadman584, on 08/18/2008, -0/+4The Russian military is a cyber-joke compared to some of the worlds hacker gangs. We like to think we have things covered, but we don't. There are threats beyond the imagination, even for diggers. I got a disk 2 days ago, containing over a thousand different rootkits/virus packs, that are truly insane. These things are killing windows extremely fast, in a VMWare VM. No way in heck would I unleash the devastation on the world. Vista, XP3, and Leopard are all insanely vulnerable. Linux is a hard nut to crack, but not impossible.
Everyone please block scripts, and enable as needed. It is incredibly annoying, but worth the time. - it5five, on 08/18/2008, -0/+4Buried because the article manages to blame Russia for the whole situation in the very first sentence.
It should read: "Among the more disturbing aspects of Russia's response to Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia, where thousands were murdered and an entire city practically leveled by the Georgians, is that..." - Lhandroval, on 08/18/2008, -0/+3Script kiddies? In MY Russia?
It's more common than you think. - craighoxton, on 08/18/2008, -0/+4Dugg for headline that won't make Cletus and Vern head for Atlanta with their shotguns
- Nick2632, on 08/18/2008, -0/+4I love the clarification in the title.
Sadly it's needed for some. - michaelwong38, on 08/18/2008, -0/+2cyberattacks with bots herds and zombie computers like mine i bet.
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