Russia vs. Georgia: The War We Didn’t See — Part 2

In my last post about the Cyber-War of Russia and Georgia, we looked at a long list of articles and blog posts about the incident. Now, I would like to provide some history and some analysis about what happened and what we have yet to see.

Let’s step back to April/May 2007, Estonia and Russia found themselves amongst a dispute.  Estonia, a small country bordered by the Baltic Sea, removed a Soviet war monument from the center of the capital, Tallinn, to a military cemetery.This did not go over well, Russia decided to hit Estonian websites with BotNets performing DOS attacks, flood websites, and even deface the websites of a political party. Russia has never claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they were traced there and one person was charged for the crime.

So, Russia has shown that it has without a doubt, the capability to attack a nation over the net.What is the US doing to counter this? As we all know, the government really doesn’t tell us much about their more important projects, we have to wait for a “leak” or a stolen laptop to disseminate that information.What we do know is that the air force is constructing its own large BotNet, the 2008 Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community addressed a cyber threat for the first time, and the US Gov’t has participated in a few Red Cell/Blue Cell activities viewed as “practice” for a real attack.

Now that we know the past, I would like to make some predictions about the future. Have you been following what’s going on between Iran and the world, a dispute that started between Israel and Iran, then brought in the US, and now has spread worldwide over Iran’s nuclear program. If you’re reading this, I know you are following Russia vs. Georgia, but did you know that the US and Russia are beginning to spat over the dispute. Russia and Iran, however have been strangely friendly in some ways. This should raise some eyebrows. Is the US at risk of a cyber-attack from Russia? Yes. Will the two major worldwide disputes escalate and involve the US in possible more fighting or even a war? That is still up in the air. Right now, the world seems to be dealing with Iran with peaceful diplomacy, good move UN, and we have yet to see what will fully happen to Russia after they walked over Georgia. The current “peace” is refreshing, but how long will it last? I believe that a cyber-war would precede a major physical attack somewhere. All I can say is keep an eye out for major site shut-downs via DDOS attacks, or a few minor site defacements because it might be a precursor of more dangerous scenarios to come.