Russia's Cyber-Attacks on Georgia and Estonia Draw Criticism

[Paul Ferguson <fergdawgster () gmail com>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Via GSN.com.

[snip]

The popular concept of the cyber-attacks launched by Russia against Estonia
and Georgia in recent years is that an army of volunteer hackers bombarded
government computers in those target countries with disabling botnet
attacks.

But the reality is that most of the cyber-pain suffered by Estonia, for
example, was caused when the U.S. and European banking system chose
intentionally to cut off Estonia from the Internet-based financial clearing
networks, because the networks couldn't distinguish bona fide transactions
emanating from Estonia from botnet-induced bogus transactions.

"We lost the U.S. Treasury for four hours," explained Stephen Spoonamore, a
partner with Global Strategic Partners and an expert in international cyber
warfare, "and that's really bad."

While Estonia's banking system was being bombarded, the European banking
settlement networks were trying to close for the day, but were being
flooded with botnet attacks from Estonia and Lithuania (another target of
Russia's cyber-offensive).

Trillions of dollars of flow was at stake, said Spoonamore, during a
luncheon presentation at the GovSec security show in Washington on March
11, "but no one could tell what was real." To protect the integrity of its
financial system, the European banking network cut off Estonia and
Lithuania, he added.

[snip]

More:
http://www.gsnmagazine.com/cms/features/news-analysis/1671.html

- - ferg

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP Desktop 9.6.3 (Build 3017)

wj8DBQFJuJgfq1pz9mNUZTMRArhPAKDeInzDXqDe/V6NBp9D+o0Bi99+gQCfeMEG
kPkzBRuhQOzQRbiWlvdBWrY=
=gfpb
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



-- 
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawgster(at)gmail.com
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.