Network Security News

Russian mobsters tied to DDoS cyberattacks on Georgia

Monday, August 17, 2009

Cyberattacks that shut down Georgian government and media websites during a brief war with Russia last August were launched by civilians and criminal gangs, who were tipped off about the impending Russian invasion of the South Ossetia region, according to a technical analysis.

The mostly classified report from the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit research institute, concludes that the close timing of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyberattacks to the invasion meant that "there had to be close cooperation between people in the Russian military and the civilian cyber attackers," according to IDG News Service, which reviewed a summary of the report.

The report said the Russian government didn't directly carry out the attacks, but at some level encouraged civilian nationalists who were recruited through social networking sites to participate in the DDoS, IDG News reported.

Servers frequently used by Russian criminal gangs for hosting malicious software were also used in the attacks.

Tensions between Russia and Georgia may have also played a part in more recent DDoS attacks against Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and Google.

Security researchers said recent DDoS attacks that knocked out Twitter for several hours two weeks ago were directed by Russian hackers at a Georgian blogger with the nickname Cyxymu, who had been posting accounts of events leading to the Russia-Georgia war to his blog.