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| Science & Technology |
| Georgia calls in Estonia, Poland to fight cyber attacks |
| 2008-08-13 |
| Computer experts from Estonia are travelling to Georgia today to keep the country's networks running amid an intense military confrontation with Russia. Poland has also offered support, allowing Georgia space on its president's Web page to post updates on its ongoing conflict with Russia. The cooperation between the former Soviet bloc allies is aimed at blunting pro-Russian computer hackers, who have been blamed over the last few years for cyber attacks against Estonia, Lithuania and Georgia in incidents linked to political friction between those nations and Russia. Two of the four experts that staff Estonia's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) were waiting Tuesday morning in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, seeking permission to drive into Georgia, said Katrin Pärgmäe, communication manager for the Estonian Informatics Centre. The two officials are also bringing humanitarian aid, she said. From Government Computer News: Networking experts from the Shadowserver Foundation said attackers orchestrated the DDOS assaults with "MachBot" code, which has been used before by Russian-based bot herders. The code uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol—the same protocol used for transmitting Web pages—to communicate with compromised personal computers, often unbeknownst by their owners. The attacks were similar to those that brought Estonian government Web sites to a standstill in April 2007—and in some regards, were predicted by Estonian Undersecretary for Defense Lauri Almann. In a recent GCN interview, Alman said, "There will be a next cyberattack. And governments need to cooperate to overcome those threats." |
| Posted by:Pappy |