Defense Tech: Cyber War 2.0 -- Russia v. Georgia


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Edited by Christian Lowe \| Contact

Cyber War 2.0 -- Russia v. Georgia

The second real cyber was has broken out. On August 8th, Russian troops crossed into South Ossetia vowing to defend what they called "Russian compatriots". As this was taking place, a multi-faceted cyber attack began against the Georgian infrastructure and key government web sites. The attack modalities included: Defacing of Web Sites (Hacktivism), Web-based Psychological Operations (Psyc-Ops), a fierce propaganda campaign (PC) and of course a Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS).

Shortly after noon east coast time in the United States, CNN's Wolf Blitzer attempted to interview Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili by phone on his live news program. The first attempt was unsuccessful and the second attempt took place about ten minutes later was able to successfully connect to President Saakashvili. President Saakashvili immediately apologized for the missed connection earlier blaming the problem on a "cyber attack" against the Georgian VoIP phone system. Another causality of the cyber attack was the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) website. At one point in time the MFA's web site had an image of Adolf Hitler beside the image of President Saakashvili.

At one point(used in the sentence above), multiple government websites were down or inaccessible for hours. This led them to make perhaps the most strategic move to date in cyber warfare. This impressive move came when the Georgian Government decided to relocate President Mikhail Saakashvili's web site to a web site hosting service in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States. The strategic thinking surrounding this move was twofold. First, the Russian cyber attackers would surely think twice about attacking a web site hosted on servers located in the United States. Secondly, if the Russian cyber attackers were to go after the President's web site hosted on U.S. soil, that action might bring the United States into the conflict.

I was told by a Georgian insider that "We were not prepared for the use of computer weapons against our communications infrastructure." Other sources in the Estonian military also told me that they had offered their assistance to the Georgian Government early on in the cyber attack. She said that they (Estonia) had gained valuable knowledge from the forensic analysis of the cyber artifacts left behind after they were attacked in April/May of 2007.

I used SBIA and TIE techniques to analyze the cyber attack against Georgia. Based on all open source intelligence, the cyber attack on Georgia analysis resulted in the following information [on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being high].

Scale of the attack = 3.3
Complexity of the attack = 3.1
Impact of the attack = 3.5

No longer can we ignore cyber weapons. This is the second minor cyber war that has broken out in the last two years. "Security experts and military leaders have been warning of the potential use of cyber weapons against government and civilian targets both as a stand-alone threat and coordinated military tactical modality," said Brian from Spy-Ops. Cyber attacks and warfare have entered into the arsenal of modern warfare. Where and when the next attack will be launched is anyone's question. The only thing for sure is there will be more.

-- Kevin Coleman

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Posted by: luxury watch at April 17, 2009 04:44 AM

Most members of the Anglo-American alliance have made their positions on an Eastern resurgence perfectly clear, and France has been pretty busy in its efforts to increase its global influence via the Georgian situation.

However, one is forced to wonder (considering the stake it has in this unfolding geopolitical drama), why has Germany been so damn quiet???

Posted by: Psypher69 at August 17, 2008 10:36 PM

I find it a bit strange to try to have a realistic discussion of this topic without any technical info. In the case of how effective is a cyberwar campaign, you should look no further than the Israeli raid on the Syrian reactor earlier this year. Their infiltration and subsequent crippling of not only Syrian air defense systems, but of Lebanese, and proxy Iranian (ie Russian) defenses left them defenseless for weeks! So far reaching was the destruction of the air control, the even the Lebanese civilain airports were down, thus jeopardizing hundreds of non-combatant lives. Add to this the fact that China has completely reverse engineered ALL Cisco firewalls and you have the possibility of absolutey crippling command and control of ANY country in the world. Is the US safe? No way, not until way we share our technical information with the world.

Posted by: James at August 14, 2008 11:00 AM

I book I read earlier discussed how china would use information warfare against Taiwan. A lot that was mentioned when beyond the internet hacking.
How easy would it be to "hack into" a TV broadcast with a computer generated image of the president(like this book described could happen with Taiwan) announcing that his or her country was surrendering to which ever opposing force was attacking or invading them? Denial of service is just annoying when it comes to the internet,real PsyOps would include messing with our minds using radio & TV & images of famous people or our nation's leaders telling us to give up(the b.s. on TV about Iraq & the War On Terror is one thing) after we had been attacked by a foreign power & possible invasion(examples being China trying to invade Guam &/or Russia trying to "retake" Alaska,both highly unlikely scenarios,but if they did happen,both China & Russia would try to have broadcast over TV & radio a "doctored" image of the president declaring surrender).
Also,could the enemy try to infiltrate the military network to issue "false orders" or give images of the enemy being where they weren't in order to cause the military to lose confidence in its chain of command?

Posted by: Roy Smith at August 14, 2008 08:06 AM

This war shows the Full effect for Future wars:
Cyberassults
Troops massing X border
air strikes
Very dangerous.
Can our US systems be so secure??
I wonder?
Maybe relocate Georgia Republic systems to US for testing & R&D.
Must do or lose next war.

Posted by: stephen russell at August 13, 2008 11:36 PM

==============================================
No,the web host is saying "(404) Unfortunately, we couldn't find that file." You have to explain cyber terror in a way that people understand. If "Busty Beauties" is down because of a DOS,that really hits home for [come on,admit it] a lot of us.
That also goes for a lot of web sites where people get their news.
==============================================
A "real" life threat it is, too. It might even make you get out of the chair and even worse go outside and see people face to face.

The bad thing about internet is it is full of teenagers and adolescent 40 somethings, that have the sole purpose in life (for the lack of life) to "hack", "pirate" and "toilet joke edit" wikis. Those who work in the field know what I am talking about. The internet is already so much "buggy" and disinformation poluted, that we don't need a war to see that kind of impact. I still think that cyber warfare is a waste of time, ridiculous, impractical and used as a scarecrow to get bigger budget. It's impact is neither that catastrophic nor it could be prolonged enough to be realy damaging. There are strategies to dfend against DoS attacks, and almost anything else is easily fixed with backups. A succesfull cyber attack means only that money was saved at the expense of even basic security tools and probably the "experts" involved were no experts at all.

Posted by: Insaint at August 13, 2008 10:38 PM

Camp
No,the web host is saying "(404) Unfortunately, we couldn't find that file." You have to explain cyber terror in a way that people understand. If "Busty Beauties" is down because of a DOS,that really hits home for [come on,admit it] a lot of us.
That also goes for a lot of web sites where people get their news.
Cyber terror is not so much about shutting down electrical plants & other utilities as it is about shutting down the free flow of ideas(no matter how wacky) or news.
If Georgia was depending on the web for news,I guess they were in a blackout when Russia attacked.There are other ways of getting news,like reading a newspaper or listening to a radio,like Shortwave or CB,but wasn't the internet supposed to be easier to find information? With the internet shut down,it's like being stuck on an escalator,& we all know how lazy people are to move when an escalator's stuck.

Posted by: Roy Smith at August 13, 2008 09:15 PM

Roy,

If you're getting an "error", "each time [you] try to get it up." Then maybe you should have a doctor look at it... just a thought :)

Posted by: Camp at August 13, 2008 09:03 PM

You know,I think that my favorite website "Celebrity Female Navels" was a victim of a cyber attack,because each time I try to get it up,the page keeps saying "error." God,this is very demoralizing.
DAMN YOU CYBER TERRORISTS!!!!

Posted by: Roy Smith at August 13, 2008 07:17 PM

First of all attackers do not have to hack thousands of systems. There are an estimated 150 million systems already compromised. These systems are part of a well documented and known Botnet. The Botnet is the primary tool to launch DDoS attacks. The DDos attack on Estonia used an estimated 30 million botnet to flood the country’s information infrastructure. Other rootkits and other malware have been found inside private networks that are well designed and protected. Furthermore a 20 year veteran special agent who recently retired has publically stated he knows of over 100,000 US systems totally compromised. The known and unknown software vulnerabilities create opportunities to compromise systems. And are responsible for about 80% of the compromises.

Every time I get a phone call I seem to find out someone has a new method or technique to compromise systems from counterfeit microprocessors and hardware to compromised firmware.

I have spent the last 30 years in defense and intelligence and have an insider’s perspective on how bad this is. Why is it many of you on here think you know it all? Some of you comments make you look like idiots! If you would open you mind and learn from this site you would be much better off.

Keep up the GREAT work Kevin

BTW 49kka90 00763F llk*73 TTYL

Posted by: AGENT at August 13, 2008 05:40 PM

Russian need to drop EMP bomb over Tbilisi...

Posted by: Jack at August 13, 2008 05:39 PM

The only legitimate purpose of cyber attacks is to piss me off & crush my morale when I can't log into You Porn or X Tube because of DOS."Uncle,uncle. I surrender!!!!"

Posted by: Roy Smith at August 13, 2008 05:10 PM

I'm still skeptical about how effective these cyber-attacks are.

Russia is winning the Russia-Georgia war because it has a much bigger, more advanced military and Russia is willing to use that big stick and call the West's bluff.

I'm not sure how the cyberattacks really effected any of this. Russia has a big stick and decided to use it.

Was Georgia unaware of Russia's capability? I don't think so. It was a question of will and Georgia underestimated Putin's KGB soul and will to power.

The cyberattacks are an annoyance, for sure. But if there had been no cyberattacks, the result would have been the same.

Posted by: jim at August 13, 2008 04:19 PM

I am a network administrator for a well known cancer research institution by profession. DOS attacks will bring web sites down, but will hardly bring down Internal network structures.

Furthermore, you can protect from DOS attacks with the proper equipment and people. These are the least threatening attacks. What we should be more worried about are bot networks that the can setup on internal computers that can be used to take over an internal network. I know from experience that these can be harder to contain and effectively deal with. Utilizing bot networks as the do for DOS attacks on an internal network means you can hijack computers on that subnet at the very least.

Posted by: Greg at August 13, 2008 04:00 PM

"Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/technology/13cyber.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

"Weeks before bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace. Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks in Lexington noticed a stream of data directed at Georgian government sites containing the message: “win+love+in+Rusia.”

Other Internet experts in the United States said the attacks against Georgia’s Internet infrastructure began as early as July 20, with coordinated barrages of millions of requests — known as distributed denial of service, or D.D.O.S., attacks — that overloaded and effectively shut down Georgian servers.

Researchers at Shadowserver, a volunteer group that tracks malicious network activity, reported that the Web site of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, had been rendered inoperable for 24 hours by multiple D.D.O.S. attacks. They said the command and control server that directed the attack was based in the United States and had come online several weeks before it began the assault.

As it turns out, the July attack may have been a dress rehearsal for an all-out cyberwar once the shooting started between Georgia and Russia. According to Internet technical experts, it was the first time a known cyberattack had coincided with a shooting war.

But it will likely not be the last, said Bill Woodcock, the research director of the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit organization that tracks Internet traffic. He said cyberattacks are so inexpensive and easy to mount, with few fingerprints, they will almost certainly remain a feature of modern warfare.

“It costs about 4 cents per machine,” Mr. Woodcock said. “You could fund an entire cyberwarfare campaign for the cost of replacing a tank tread, so you would be foolish not to.”".....
.
.
"Full Metal Jacket Clip #8"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zutuh0YCOqs

Posted by: Camp at August 13, 2008 03:41 PM

I have said this a few times and each time someone tells me that I am a idiot, but again this proves my point on Cyber attacks. If Georgia a tiny little no nothing country that admits it did not perpare for attacks can keep there VOIP phones why would anyone thing that a massive attach against the US would result in the lose of everything. As if they could just shutdown all our phones, comms, power plants, internet sites, etc all at the flip of the switch. You would be forced to hack into thosands of systems that have spent time trying to pervent this kind of thing from happening.

This is not to say that we don't need to work hard to pervent the attack but the fear this stuff brings up is more about people wanting money than it is about true threats.

Posted by: The Cenobyte at August 13, 2008 02:29 PM

Russians may not be responsible for cyberattacks on Georgia

Earlier this week, we covered a report from the Georgian Foreign Ministry, claiming that the Russian Business Network (RBN) was actively engaged in cyberwarfare against Georgia—with the blessing and backing of the Russian government. There have been no new reports from that source, but several security experts have spoken up, and raised the question of whether or not the Russian government is actually involved.

According to Gadi Evron, former Chief information security officer (CISO) for the Israeli government's ISP, there's compelling historical evidence to suggest that the Russian military is not involved.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080813-georgian-attacks-might-not-be-russians-after-all.html

Posted by: markus Wolf at August 13, 2008 01:35 PM

Cyber War 2.0 -- Russia v. Georgia

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