image credit: Paul Ferguson
In something straight out of a SciFi novel from the 80s, Russia used the web as the first wave of their recent assault on the breakaway country of Georgia. Recent reports form the CBC and BBC state that the attack actually began nearly 3 weeks ago when many of the Georgian government servers were hacked. The hacking can be traced back to the Russian “mafia” who for weeks has bombarded the servers will billions of bytes of, you guessed it, spam. These are the same individuals who infamous for stealing identities then selling them en masse – even via the web.
While there has been no direct connection made between this underworld element to the Kremlin, it may explain why some of the first targets for the jet attacks were cell towers. By effectively eliminating wired and WiFi capabilities, the Georgians are unable to communicate via normal channels. The depth of the damage remains to be seen, but it could, in theory, go well beyond military operations, and effect financial institutions, and even individuals within the Georgian government.
Not as deadly as the brute force of bombs and tanks, it has and will likely continue to wreak havoc on the inner most workings of the small country’s parliament.
Vito Greto