TOP OF THE NEWS
–Georgia Receives International Help in Wake of Cyberattacks
(August 11, 2008)
The Georgian presidential website and other government websites have once again been the target of cyber attacks. Similar attacks occurred in late July, prior to the outbreak of military conflict between
Georgia and Russia regarding South Ossetia.
The malware used to launch the most recent distributed denial-of-service attacks appears to be a variant of Pinch; the command and control server used in the attacks is based in Turkey. In a separate, related story, Poland's president Lech Kaczynski has made his official website available to the Georgian government so it can disseminate information about the conflict. In addition, the website of Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvili was moved to a US hosting facility over the weekend.
The attacks on the site are continuing.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/11/georgia_ddos_attack_reloaded/print.html
http://news.smh.com.au/technology/poland-makes-web-site-available-to-georgia-20080811-3tl5.html
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/world/2008-08-11-georgia-president-hacked_N.htm?csp=34
[Editor's Note (Ullrich): There have now been some suggestions that the attack was organized in part by the infamous "Russian Business
Network" (RBN) in cooperation with Russian intelligence services. See http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/
(Honan): The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia has set up a Blog on Google to provide updates on the conflict at
http://georgiamfa.blogspot.com/2008/08/cyber-attacks-disable-georgian-websites.html
(((Now allegedly being hosted in Estonia, a nation that will be finding plenty to chew on here.)))
while Wikipedia is also keeping track of events
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_South_Ossetia_(2008)#Cyberattacks ]
(((More:)))
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/civilge-the-geo.html
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/investigators-a.html
