Russia vs. Georgia...

August 2008

Cyberattacks knock out Georgia’s Internet presence. Hackers, perhaps affiliated with a well-known Russian criminal network, have attacked and hijacked Web sites belonging to Georgia, the former Soviet republic now in the fourth day of war with Russia, a security researcher claimed on Sunday. Some Georgian government and commercial sites are unavailable, while others may have been hijacked, said a researcher who tracks the notorious Russian Business Network (RBN), a malware and criminal hosting network. “Many of Georgia’s Internet servers were under external control from late Thursday,” he said early Saturday in an entry on his Web site. According to his research, the government’s sites dedicated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, and the country’s president have been blocked completely, or traffic to and from those sites’ servers have been redirected to servers actually located in Russia and Turkey. Statements from Georgia’s foreign ministry have appeared in a blog hosted on Google, perhaps in an attempt to circumvent attacks.