Georgia Under Online Assault

The WIRED BLOG NETWORK covers the story of the denial of service attacks that have been occurring on the websites of the government of Georgia for several weeks now, where it is apparent that Russia is behind the digital assault and which intensified significantly once the shooting between Russia and Georgia began.

The Associated Press meanwhile reports that the Georgian President's Web site along with a Georgian television station's site have been moved to a US web hosting service in Atlanta, Georgia, although the attacks (traced to Moscow and St. Petersburg) are continuing now on the U.S. server.

The RBNExploit blog, referenced as an authoritative source on this subject, is in the forefront of reporting on what Intelfusion is calling a "full scale cyberware being conducted by Russia against Georgia."

The Georgian news site, Civil.ge is under permanent attack and has swtiched their operations to one of Google's Blogspot domains to keep information flowing about what is going on in their country.

"Another interesting aspect is seeing how certain countries are what I call 'cyberlocked,'" cybersecurity veteran Richard Bejtlich tells Danger Room. "We know a land-locked country has no access to the sea. Countries like .ge [Georgia] might rely too heavily on one or a handful of connections, potentially through hostile countries (eg, .ru [Russia]), for their physical connectivity. As a result, an adversary can control their network access to the outside world. "

Estonia, once victimized by Russian hackers is itself hosting Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. To add to the mix, NPR's Ivan Watson reports that Russian planes are continually bombing cell phone towers in an efforts to knock out telecomunications networks as well.

See Aid Worker Daily and washingtonpost.com for more coverage.