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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Estonia, Google Help 'Cyberlocked' Georgia against Russian attack |
| 2008-08-12 |
| Civil.ge, the Georgian news site, is "under permanent [cyber] attack." So they've switched their operations to one of Google's Blogspot domains, to keep the information flowing about what's going on in their country. The attacks against Civil.ge are part of a larger set of online assaults, originating in Russia, against Georgian websites. "In a sense," notes Jim Stogdill, "they must be saying 'we can't keep our sites up, but we don't think [Russian hackers] can take down Blogspot, given Google's much better infrastructure and ability to defend it.'" "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. A diagram from the Packet Clearing House, shows Georgia's network dilemma. Meanwhile, Estonia (once the victim of Russian-based hackers) is now hosting Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. And "in a historic first, Estonia is sending cyberdefense advisors to Georgia," Network World observes. UPDATE: Two Azerbaijani media outlets claim they're under assault, too. And some Russian sites are getting hit, in what appears to be a bit of cyber-payback. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |