Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It Read Online Free PDF

Russian populations in those territories succeeded in defeating the ragtag Georgian army and expelling most Georgians. The territories then set up “independent” governments. Although still legally part of Georgia as far as the rest of the world was concerned, the regions relied on Russian funding and protection. Then, in July 2008, SouthOssetian rebels (or Russian agents, depending upon whose version of events you trust) provoked a conflict with Georgia by staging a series of missile raids on Georgian villages.
    The Georgian army, predictably, responded to the missile strikes on its territory by bombing the South Ossetian capital city. Then, on August 7, Georgia invaded the region. Not surprised by this turn of events, the Russian army moved the next day, quickly ejecting the Georgian army from South Ossetia. Precisely at the same time that the Russian army moved, so did its cyber warriors. Their goal was to prevent Georgians from learning what was going on, so they streamed DDOS attacks on Georgian media outlets and government websites. Georgia’s access to CNN and BBC websites were also blocked.
    In the physical world, the Russians also bombed Georgia and took over a small chunk of Georgian territory that was not in dispute, allegedly to create a “buffer zone.” While the Georgian army was busy getting routed in Ossetia, rebel groups in Abkhazia decided to take advantage of the situation and push out any remaining Georgians, with a little help from their Russian backers. The Russian army then took another little slice of Georgian land, as an additional buffer. Five days later, most of the fighting was over. French President Nicolas Sarkozy brokered a peace agreement in which the Russians agreed to withdraw from Georgia immediately and to leave the disputed territories once an international peacekeeping force arrived to fill the security vacuum. That force never arrived, and within a few weeks Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. The declared independent states then invited their Russian benefactors to stay.
    To most in the U.S., except then presidential candidate John McCain, who tried to portray it as a national security crisis for America, all of this activity in Georgia seemed remote and unimportant. As soon as most Americans reassured themselves that the news reportsthey heard about the invasion of Georgia did not really mean Russian army troops or General Sherman again marching on Atlanta, they tuned out. The event’s true significance, beyond what it revealed of the Russian rulers’ thinking about their former empire, lies in what it exposed of their attitudes toward the use of cyber attacks.
    Before fighting broke out in the physical world, cyber attacks hit Georgian government sites. In the initial stages, the attackers conducted basic DDOS attacks on Georgian government websites and hacked into the web server of the President’s site to deface it, adding pictures that compared the Georgian leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, to Adolf Hitler. It had seemed trivial, even juvenile, at first. Then the cyber attacks picked up in intensity and sophistication just as the ground fighting broke out.
    Georgia connects to the Internet through Russia and Turkey. Most of the routers in Russia and Turkey that send traffic on to Georgia were so flooded with incoming attacks that no outbound traffic could get through. Hackers seized direct control of the rest of the routers supporting traffic to Georgia. The effect was that Georgians could not connect to any outside news or information sources and could not send e-mail out of the country. Georgia effectively lost control of the nation’s “.ge” domain and was forced to shift many government websites to servers outside the country.
    The Georgians tried to defend their cyberspace and engage in “work-arounds” to foil the DDOS attack. The Russians countered every move. Georgia tried to block all traffic coming from Russia. The Russians