Cyber DefCon 5: Georgian Internet Under Attack, Russians Blamed

By Davey Winder
Monday, 11 August 2008 19:35

Networking

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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