Davey Winder
Monday, 11 August 2008 20:35
Business IT -
Networking
Page 1 of 2
Cyber DefCon 5 is defined as being effective when malicious nation to nation attacks with the intent to destroy communication infrastructures as well as disable business processes occur. Georgia is at a state of Cyber DefCon 5. No prizes for guessing who is doing the attacking...
War is never pretty. As the Russian tanks rolled towards South Ossetia
over the weekend, one thing was certain: Russia was intent on teaching
the upstart Georgia a lesson it would not quickly forget.
That lesson includes IT as it seems that as well
as the sheer physical might of the Russian military, Georgia is also on
the receiving end of that most 21st Century of battle strategies: cyber
warfare.
According to
RBNexploit which monitors
the activity of the Russian Business Network, many of Georgia's
Internet servers have been under external control since last Thursday.
The day before the tanks rolled in...
The Russian Business Network is described by the Spamhaus Project
'
Register of Known Spam Operations' database
as being among "the world's worst spammer, child-pornography, malware,
phishing and cybercrime hosting networks."
You might have heard of it thanks to some of the things it is
responsible for. Things such as the MPack malware kit or the
Storm
Botnet which is reported
as sending more than a billion spam emails every day.
However, the RBN is also known to be a very well organised crime
outfit. Think Russian organised crime and you think Russian Mafia.
Think Russian Mafia and for many the political connections start
flowing freely.
Indeed, The Guardian newspaper
investigated RBN and suggests that the leader of the organisation, a
twenty-something known simply as 'Flyman' has some very high-level
connections.
It says that Flyman is thought to be "the nephew of a powerful and well-connected Russian politician."
RBNexploit goes further still and
claims
that the Russian Business Network has been 'nationalised' and has
invaded Georgian Cyber Space.
It says that the cyber war is going on in parallel with the
conventional physical military theatre of war. "Much of Georgia’s
cyberspace is now under unauthorized external control" RBNexploit
blogger Jart Armin claims.
Which Georgian sites have been attacked? Find out on page 2...
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