ACM TechNews

Some Russian PCs Used to Cyberattack Georgia

USA Today (08/18/08) P. 1B; Acohido, Byron

Thousands of Russian citizens have volunteered their PCs to be used in cyberattacks against Web sites supporting Georgia, say security experts. Several hours after skirmishes between Russia and Georgia started, a call for action was posted on the Web site stopgeorgia.ru, which listed Georgia government sites as potential targets. The site also posted a software tool that emits a stream of nuisance requests from the user's PC to target Web sites. Clicking on the tool allowed users to participate in a denial-of-service attack on Georgia's Web pages, says Damballa researcher Artem Dinaburg. Thousands of pro-Russia users have been clicking on the tool and attacking a list of pro-Georgia Web sites. Russian cybercrime lords are also assisting Russia's assault by directing part of their large botnet networks to join the attack. Damballa recently identified a few hundred PCs in the United States that were also being used to attack pro-Georgia Web sites. A similar attack cut off most Internet services in Estonia for several weeks last year, and there have been at least a dozen smaller-scale attacks over political disputes between Russia and Baltic states with Western affiliations, says VeriSign's Kimberly Zenz. "This type of attack will form at least a part of all geopolitical conflicts from now on," says Team Cymru's Steve Santorelli.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/
hacking/2008-08-17-russi a-georgia-war-hackers_N.htm

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