clydeiii/cybersecurity · Datasets at Hugging Face

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communication manager for the Estonian Informatics Center. The two officials
are also bringing humanitarian aid, she said.
Estonia is also now hosting Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site, which
has been under sustained attack over the last few days.
"Let's just say we moved it," P
e said. "I know that there are interested
parties who read media so it's not good to say exactly where the hosting is."
The Web site for Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, remained up on
Tuesday morning. That site was knocked offline around mid-July after a DDOS
attack from a botnet, network experts said.
The botnet was based on the "MachBot" code, which communicates to other
compromised PCs over the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), the same
protocol used for transmitting Web pages. MachBot code has been known to
be used by Russian bot herders, according to the Shadowserver Foundation,
which tracks malicious Internet activity.
Shadowserver said Monday that hackers had at one point defaced the Web
site for Georgia's parliament. "The attackers have inserted a large image
made up of several smaller side-by-side images of pictures of both the
Georgian President and Adolf Hitler," the group wrote.
Georgia is now also hosting some sites in the U.S., a logical move to better
defend the sites against attacks, P
e said. Shadowserver wrote that the
presidential site appeared to have been moved to an IP (Internet protocol)
address belonging to Tulip Systems, an ISP in Atlanta, Georgia.
The country is also looking to other ways to keep information flowing. A
Georgian news site was also up, but the site warned it was under "permanent
DDOS attack" That Web site has set up a group in Google's Groups service,
where subscribers can get the news stories it regularly posts.
Georgia's banking sites also suffered attacks that caused them to shut down
their online systems, said David Tabatadze, a security officer with the Georgia
Research and Educational Networking Association and Georgia's CERT. Some
of those systems are still down, he said.
Tabatadze said that the majority of Georgia's Internet traffic is routed through
Turkey, with some of it going through Russia. Although some news reports
indicated Georgia's Internet traffic may have been shifted through Russia,
Tabatadze said that's not the case.
"We have checked the traffic route on Ripe.net...and we did not see any
traffic re-routing via Russia," Tabatadze said.
It appears that large groups of hackers are working together to take down
the Web sites, but the attacks have been so intense that it will take a while to
analyze, Tabatadze said.
Other CERTs around the world have been helping to provide information on
the attacks, Tabatadze said.
The last few days have been a nerve-racking time for Georgians, said
Tabatadze, who said he heard explosions on Sunday when Russian planes
bombed air-traffic control stations near Tbilisi, Georgia's capital.
"You can't even imagine the situation," Tabatadze said. "This is a terrible end
for Georgia."
On Tuesday morning, Russia announced it would stop military operations in
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, saying the safety of its peacekeepers in the
region had been secured.
THE TELEGRAPH
13 August 2008
By John Swaine
Russia continues cyber war on Georgia
Their assault, which began before the commencement of the five-day
Russian military offensive, has again crashed the official website of the central
government and has been widened to include a US company which
stepped in to rescue the website of Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian
President.
Tom Burling, from Tulip Systems, which began hosting the President's site on its
servers in Atlanta after it was brought down by the hackers, said his company
had become the latest target of a flood of bogus traffic sent from Russia to
crash the sites. He said the malicious visits were outnumbering legitimate ones
5000 to 1.
Mr Burling, who has reported the attacks to the FBI, said his company was
working around the clock to combat the hackers. "Our people aren't getting
any sleep," he said.
The President's website is currently accessible, as are the sites of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defence, which were also brought down in the
initial wave of attacks. At one stage, photographs comparing Mr Saaskashvili
with Adolf Hitler were posted on the Foreign Ministry's site. The website of the
National Bank of Georgia has also been compromised.
The Russian hackers are launching waves of distributed denial-of-service
(DDoS) attacks on the websites. This means their computers, and the
computers of unsuspecting people whose home systems they have hacked
and enlisted for their "botnet", or swarm of zombie computers, are directed to
simultaneously flood a chosen site with thousands of visits in order to overload
it and bring it offline.
Last April the computer systems of the Estonian Government came under
attack in a co-ordinated three-week assault that was widely credited to
state-sponsored Russian hackers.
The Georgian Government said that the present disruption was being caused
by attacks carried out by Russia as part of the conflict between the two
states, which was triggered last week over Georgia's attempt to reassert
authority over its northern rebel province of South Ossetia.
In a statement, the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: "A cyber warfare
campaign by Russia is seriously disrupting many Georgian websites, including
that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
Analysts immediately laid the blame for the attacks on Georgian sites with the
Russian Business Network (RBN), a gang of criminal hackers which has close
links to the Russian mafia and government.
Jart Armin, a researcher who tracks RBN activity, said visitors to the Georgian
sites had been re-routed through servers in Russia and Turkey, which were
"well known to be under the control of RBN and influenced by the Russian
Government."
Greg Day, a security analyst at McAfee, said increasingly hacking will be a
matter of national security.
"We can expect to see cyber attacks being increasingly used as a weapon.
The benefits of using such methods are that no one is directly physically hurt

communication manager for the Estonian Informatics Center. The two officials

are also bringing humanitarian aid, she said.

Estonia is also now hosting Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site, which

has been under sustained attack over the last few days.

"Let's just say we moved it," P

e said. "I know that there are interested

parties who read media so it's not good to say exactly where the hosting is."

The Web site for Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, remained up on

Tuesday morning. That site was knocked offline around mid-July after a DDOS

attack from a botnet, network experts said.

The botnet was based on the "MachBot" code, which communicates to other

compromised PCs over the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), the same

protocol used for transmitting Web pages. MachBot code has been known to

be used by Russian bot herders, according to the Shadowserver Foundation,

which tracks malicious Internet activity.

Shadowserver said Monday that hackers had at one point defaced the Web

site for Georgia's parliament. "The attackers have inserted a large image

made up of several smaller side-by-side images of pictures of both the

Georgian President and Adolf Hitler," the group wrote.

Georgia is now also hosting some sites in the U.S., a logical move to better

defend the sites against attacks, P

e said. Shadowserver wrote that the

presidential site appeared to have been moved to an IP (Internet protocol)

address belonging to Tulip Systems, an ISP in Atlanta, Georgia.

The country is also looking to other ways to keep information flowing. A

Georgian news site was also up, but the site warned it was under "permanent

DDOS attack" That Web site has set up a group in Google's Groups service,

where subscribers can get the news stories it regularly posts.

Georgia's banking sites also suffered attacks that caused them to shut down

their online systems, said David Tabatadze, a security officer with the Georgia

Research and Educational Networking Association and Georgia's CERT. Some

of those systems are still down, he said.

Tabatadze said that the majority of Georgia's Internet traffic is routed through

Turkey, with some of it going through Russia. Although some news reports

indicated Georgia's Internet traffic may have been shifted through Russia,

Tabatadze said that's not the case.

"We have checked the traffic route on Ripe.net...and we did not see any

traffic re-routing via Russia," Tabatadze said.

It appears that large groups of hackers are working together to take down

the Web sites, but the attacks have been so intense that it will take a while to

analyze, Tabatadze said.

Other CERTs around the world have been helping to provide information on

the attacks, Tabatadze said.

The last few days have been a nerve-racking time for Georgians, said

Tabatadze, who said he heard explosions on Sunday when Russian planes

bombed air-traffic control stations near Tbilisi, Georgia's capital.

"You can't even imagine the situation," Tabatadze said. "This is a terrible end

for Georgia."

On Tuesday morning, Russia announced it would stop military operations in

South Ossetia and Abkhazia, saying the safety of its peacekeepers in the

region had been secured.

THE TELEGRAPH

13 August 2008

By John Swaine

Russia continues cyber war on Georgia

Their assault, which began before the commencement of the five-day

Russian military offensive, has again crashed the official website of the central

government and has been widened to include a US company which

stepped in to rescue the website of Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian

President.

Tom Burling, from Tulip Systems, which began hosting the President's site on its

servers in Atlanta after it was brought down by the hackers, said his company

had become the latest target of a flood of bogus traffic sent from Russia to

crash the sites. He said the malicious visits were outnumbering legitimate ones

5000 to 1.

Mr Burling, who has reported the attacks to the FBI, said his company was

working around the clock to combat the hackers. "Our people aren't getting

any sleep," he said.

The President's website is currently accessible, as are the sites of the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defence, which were also brought down in the

initial wave of attacks. At one stage, photographs comparing Mr Saaskashvili

with Adolf Hitler were posted on the Foreign Ministry's site. The website of the

National Bank of Georgia has also been compromised.

The Russian hackers are launching waves of distributed denial-of-service

(DDoS) attacks on the websites. This means their computers, and the

computers of unsuspecting people whose home systems they have hacked

and enlisted for their "botnet", or swarm of zombie computers, are directed to

simultaneously flood a chosen site with thousands of visits in order to overload

it and bring it offline.

Last April the computer systems of the Estonian Government came under

attack in a co-ordinated three-week assault that was widely credited to

state-sponsored Russian hackers.

The Georgian Government said that the present disruption was being caused

by attacks carried out by Russia as part of the conflict between the two

states, which was triggered last week over Georgia's attempt to reassert

authority over its northern rebel province of South Ossetia.

In a statement, the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: "A cyber warfare

campaign by Russia is seriously disrupting many Georgian websites, including

that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."

Analysts immediately laid the blame for the attacks on Georgian sites with the

Russian Business Network (RBN), a gang of criminal hackers which has close

links to the Russian mafia and government.

Jart Armin, a researcher who tracks RBN activity, said visitors to the Georgian

sites had been re-routed through servers in Russia and Turkey, which were

"well known to be under the control of RBN and influenced by the Russian

Government."

Greg Day, a security analyst at McAfee, said increasingly hacking will be a

matter of national security.

"We can expect to see cyber attacks being increasingly used as a weapon.

The benefits of using such methods are that no one is directly physically hurt