I Don’t Believe in Organized Cyberattack against Georgian Sites, I Do Believe in Russian Hackers
by
on August 11, 2008,
I’ve been thinking for a while if anyone will manage to bring the conflict between Russia and Georgia into technology field and I actually hoped that no one would since it is too complicated of a problem to be discussed by the technology blogosphere - after all, the only thing that actually matter is that citizens of Russia and Georgia (both military personnel and civilians) are killed in thousands at the region.
But it looks like these days it is impossible to have anything happening in real life without finding a way to connect it to the internet and how it affects this or that event. And what we see increasingly is internet growing to become an additional theatre of war.
So now we see the conflict heavily discussed in various technology publications because of Georgia accusing Russia of an organized cyberattack that caused outage of all official Georgian sites. A spokesperson of the Georgian embassy in the UK told to ZDNet that the websites of the Georgian government, including the sites of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs, and the official presidential website were all taken down over the weekend as a result of a coordinated DDoS attack.
In this very same talk the spokesperson admitted that Georgia could not prove Russia had been responsible for the attack because an investigation was needed to confirm it. But anyway the spokesperson used one argument as a proof: “Who else might it be though?”. True, the information is available that the attacks originated from servers based in Russia but accusing Russian authorities seems to be groundless only based on the facts that the servers were in Russia and Russia was the only party interested.
As a result of the attacks the Georgian government is working to redirect traffic from the attacked websites to other sites hosted in other countries or even on publicly available services, like Google’s Blogspot.
It is worth mentioning that Russian news agencies report similar DDoS attacks against Russian media outlets, including one major news agency, RIA Novosti. I guess that if we follow the same pattern of thinking, Russia should also accuse Georgia of an organized cyberattack against Russian sites delivering information in a way that is not what the Georgian government is willing its citizens to consume the news. I am not going to jump to conclusions here but it is hard to understand why Georgia is so very much willing to accuse Russia of a cyberattack, at the same time possibly engaging in the same activities.
But the main thing is that people don’t understand one thing: official Russian authorities hardly have anything to do with the attacks and will hardly bother to do something in this field with real troops in the region trying to restore peace. I don’t have any contacts in any of the institutions that could be involved but if there is one thing that I know for sure it is that all the Russian citizens are deeply infuriated by the situation in Ossetia and absolutely everyone here is ready to offer help in any way that we can to the refugees from the region. And I tend to believe that Russian hackers don’t need any special invitation or request from the government to influence the situation in the way that they can. Russian hackers are known to be willing to express their opinions on the most acute international problems in the way that is accessible to them. So accuse them of the attacks all you want but remember that they are not killing anyone.
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Svetlana Gladkova
John Phelps
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
I got an earful of Russian viewpoint on NPR this morning.
You think it’s wrong to have both sides speaking? Since I mainly read news on English-language sites I have not seen any unbiased article, let along something from the Russian side of the fence.
http://www.axisglobe.com/news.asp?news=13476
you may be right. or not. one thing is for sure, truth is very very very hard to find, no matter what country one lives in.
at least going with our own intuition results in a feeling of stability in our world view (right or wrong view doesn’t matter, it is the feeling of stability that counts :-), and is fought for)
No, obviously it’s great to have both sides speaking. It’s just that Russia’s viewpoint has been amply shared over here. That’s not to say it’s given a lot of credit, but it’s been heard.
@mrshl: I have seen the Russian opinion censored away even from Digg (how does 485 diggs in 5 hours without getting popular sound to you?). As a Russian citizen I know for sure that we are not always told the truth about everything but at least people should have a chance to hear both sides, glad you agree with that.
well, when all twitters eat from same plate, they also twit same song
I am not sure whether Russian info is correct (moreover I doubt it for almost 100%) but I am strong proponent of all opinions being heard… tho it is not very popular way because it is demanding and more than everything else it demands to think 
@silpol: Same here, I am 100% sure we are not told all the truth (though find me a country that shares all the truth with its citizens and I’ll be greatly surprised). And probably unwillingness to think causes all this imbalanced coverage everywhere, you must be right here.
I wander how much American support for Georgia on the Internet comes from USA special interest group consultants?
I’m not sure all or even most Americans would agree with the perspective that “we are told the news.” Many Americans would say “we get the news.” Indeed, with so many choices, news is where you find it. And you usually get the truth you want. That’s not to say that other truths aren’t available or convenient. There is an abundance of truth. Pick one, pick many. Move on.
mrshl: I am not American so I won’t be able to contribute my opinion but I have heard some Americans did not feel they lived in a particularly free country. And of course information is available in all sorts but finding the truth is a difficult task taking some time and efforts and probably impossible for the majority of population.
I don’t claim that I am actually right, I sure don’t have enough information to know the truth, the only thing that I know is that our hackers don’t need any coordination for such actions if they choose to express their view on what’s going on in the conflict.
What actually disappoints me is that everyone is trying to deliver the Georgian point of view, at the same time heavily discriminating the Russian one and not letting it be heard.
x “people don’t understand one thing: official Russian authorities hardly have anything to do with the attacks…”
I am sorry Svetlana I really love ur Blogging, but in this case it seems you were only publishing what a Mr. Major of K^G*B has put on your desk this morning…
How can you say, being a famous independent Blogger, that people “DON’T UNDERSTAND” something? - these discussions have nothing to deal with the “understanding”- there could be just few points of view and the official versions of one of the both sides! nobody owns the facts in this world, all mass media brings us the sh^t only. I was reading a lot of materials in these days, and those “more or less official”… it was making me crying!
in this case I am 100% convinced that the attacks, on the battlefields and on-line, was properly organized & carefully managed. this believe comes from seeing the how quick & perfect it was the whole operation, starting from its starting point- provocation of this conflict (I have no doubts it was a provocation!).
But I don’t want judge who’s right and who’s wrong in this case, it’s too difficult & we’ll never know the facts, but I have my own head with, I believe, quite good brains inside :), and this gives me a way to analyze the facts. and the facts say it was a perfect operation, start-to-end. so ‘coz it was planned I believe the months in advance, planned in multi-channel mode to make it all long only few days (to now allow USA/EU even understand what’s going on). It’s the classical military tactics!
but well, here we’re talking about the harkers. and who are those hackers we’re talking about? Independent Software professionals like many people here in Europe?
‘coz not! Security Experts working for big corporations during the day and in the night for their entertaining only do hacking? of ‘coz not! in Russia it’s all different. even the hackers, those able/ motivated/ launched with some mission, are the products of the worst thing ever- USSR.
this story said to me that the wonderful svetlana was having an emotional reaction based on being, i guessed, russian. had she been from thailand or somewhere else, objectivity would be more. but i don’t mind, heart on the sleeve is good.
and, now, how will she respond to what will happen with ukraine? and does she think the soviet union is going to be put back together again, by force or coercion?
i don’t fear russia, i fear the russian ego, same like i fear the american ego. and nationalism is a huge disease, but we are a ways away from getting over that.e3
@Andrey: Please, believe me the guys from KGB have nothing to do with Profy. Profy is an independent publication incorporated in San Francisco and the fact that I work from Russia does not change a thing here. And you definitely sound like you are exaggerating the control over free speech here. I don’t tell that we are absolutely free here but it’s not as bad you picture it and I enjoy the full freedom as I don’t have absolutely anything to do with the Russian government or other authorities.
As for the conflict itself, I can agree that it was a provocation but the provocation was from Georgia, not from Russia. And it was also a well-planned operation on behalf of Georgia as well. The only thing that they planned for and that did not happen was that the US would immediately join in the war so this must have been a heavy disappointment to them. And of course Russia was ready to react - the troops were in the region because it was obvious Georgia would start something like this at one point or another.
I do understand that you think that nothing really changed here since the years when you left the USSR (and I’m sure you had good reasons to leave) but you are not particularly right here - a lot of things have changed and a lot of people do use their brains in the way they feel appropriate and worthy.
@gregorylent: Thank you for calling me “wonderful”, first of all, that’s really a pleasure. And of course I am absolutely unable to be objective in the situation because I am Russian. But the problem is that no one is objective in this whole thing, not any single media outlet is trying to be objective, everyone is supporting one of the sides in the conflict.
As for the Soviet Union, I don’t think it is possible to put it back and I don’t even think about the events in Georgia as an attempt to restore the USSR. Unfortunately I think the US in this situation is a much more dangerous country since it’s because of their influence all these countries try to oppose themselves to Russia expecting to receive some financial support from the US while in reality it would have been much more reasonable to live in peace and cooperation in this region. I think the US trying to find an enemy outside of the country to distract the nation from the internal problem is disgusting. What’s more, I think the approach of trying to split all the countries here in Europe is extremely dangerous. Many European countries depend strongly on Russia and they have no reasons for a conflict here, it is just not reasonable. And if the US actually stuck to home business more, Europe would have been much more stable and much richer as well - but the US does not want to see a stable, rich, powerful Europe with solid euro. And this is the only reason we see all of these happening.
Well, it seems to go far beyond the garden variety of cyberattacks now. http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/258727
Interesting new development of the situation, thanks for sharing the link. The only thing is that I don’t see any links and until I see such sites with my own eyes I’ll prefer not to believe anything - too many lies already everywhere.