Russian spy agencies linked to Georgian cyber-attacks
Follow the bear prints
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More circumstantial evidence has emerged linking the Russian authorities to cyber-attacks on Georgia that coincided with a ground war between the two countries in July and August last year.
Security researchers from Greylogic published a report on Friday which concluded Russia's Foreign Military Intelligence agency (the GRU) and Federal Security Service (the FSB), rather than patriotic hackers, were likely to have played a key role in co-ordinating and organising the attacks.
The Stopgeorgia.ru forum, which became a fulcrum for attacks of key Georgian websites last year, uses an ISP located a few doors down from GRU headquarters. Greylogic reckons the site was added as a front for state-backed cyber-attacks under the cover of cybercrime.
The StopGeorgia.ru forum was part of a bulletproofed network that relied on shell companies and false WHOIS data to (a) prevent its closure through Terms of Service violations, and (b) to mask the involvement of the Russian FSB/GRU. By mimicking the structure of the Russian Business Network, a cyber criminal enterprise, it creates plausible deniability that it is a Kremlin-funded Information Operation.
Greylogic's study concludes: "The available evidence supports a strong likelihood of GRU/FSB planning and direction at a high level while relying on Nashi intermediaries and the phenomenon of crowdsourcing to obfuscate their involvement and implement their strategy."
"Nashi" (translation: “Youth Democratic Anti-Fascist Movement Ours!") is a youth group in Russia founded four years ago to counter anti-Russian and fascist tendencies in the country. The group is supposedly funded by Russian businessmen, but a pipeline from the Kremlin is suspected.
Long-standing rumours that Russia was behind cyber-attacks on neighbouring countries were recently fuelled when State Duma Deputy Sergei Markov (somewhat implausibly) claimed that one of his assistants was responsible for instigating cyber-attacks against Estonia in 2007. In a Spartacus-style move shortly after this, Konstantin Goloskokov, a "commissar" in Nashi, claimed he and other associates were responsible for the month-long cyber-assault on Estonia.
The Project Grey Goose Phase II report is a follow-up to an October report by the same group of security researchers on the Georgian cyber war. The latest report looks at cyberwarfare incidents beyond the sphere of the former Soviet republics to consider attacks in Gaza and politically-motivated assaults against the Eastern India Railway Web site. ®
COMMENTS
Russia. A Place To Bring Up Lincoln?
AC @ Tuesday 24 Mar 0002 -
AC, the only thing for Russians to reason the Kremlin's tendency of having and holding its autoritarian policy is that there are more than 50 % of Russian regions' economy is depressive, they produce less than it's necessary for social security, which is much more important than any military activities. With some transfers from Moscow, regions somehow manage to survive... and the local authorities even can continue stealing from the budget. As far as I know, the majority share this point of view.
And still less hope, less trust, day after day. Completely idiotic television and musical sets on radio. Third sex represent the nation on Eurovision. The list is to be continued. And everyone on top is saying oh, oil falls down, no salary this month. Just afraid to give more independence to regions, even in the format of a federation... don't know is it possible to have self-dependence or not. Nobody seem to know. Something scary like China will take Russian lands from the East, England - from the West, and the US will get Siberia. (Hey, no place for Japan and Korea??) Boo?
So can anybody forgive those of the Russians who feel dependent of this bureaucratic power... and, after long years of Stalinists experiments on the nation's genome, they do not crowd on the streets protesting... yet or never. A no-other-leader situation, perhaps.
Looks like things are just fine for the old-team pseudo-socialist/pseudo-capitalist bureaucracy and its stoogees, battling the efforts of the over-systemic team which might be called really national. They just naturally hate ALL people around, not only their fellow citizen. They are the best friends of every foreign intelligence' trainee. The #1 enemy within the house.
Well, one more subject is that most of the Russian tech production (like cars and such) look like that its designers were paid some extra roubles for making the design specifically ugly, and its performance also makes distinctive sucking sounds. I'm generally no wonder how Air&Space industry and science survived. In 90s those old boffins were developing new space trucks for the stake of a janitor.
@ TeeCee - nice humour, both Spaghetti Divinori and Porn Kings sometimes do useful things, agree... and sometimes don't. Depends on who pays. And, a young skilled change for bureaucrafts from Nashi's leaders?
Some little off-top turned out... I sometimes think that one-you-know-who there in Kremlin would really, really want to invite some foreign leader to work a president for a while. Seems like they all know what to do. I'm sure he/she will remember this experience as the most horrible time in life. Got any offer?
73
GRU? No, Plumbers.
It's so rare nowadays that we can have an article about anything Russian without quite explainable evil hiss from the author. This one has nothing of it, John Leyden. Though, as most of the information coming to Russia from behind the Hissing Curtain concerns its oil, its cyberattacks and its criminal with Mr Putin as an avatar of this Trinity (-:
And re> "Follow the bear prints..." - personally never been too fond of Kremlin's authoritarian activities, but this invective should be somehow corrected, I suppose. For these are cow's plops for the lone shepherd. A young eee'd "patriotic" plumber in the basement of the Aquarium does not necessarily means the involvement of the whole team GRU. And, what a cool lyrical digression: "ISP of GRU"! That's some traffic! Was it Gadi Evron again who knows how to make some funny stuff from thin air?
No way could GRU spend its human resources and routes on such rubbish like attacking Georgian "important" sites + yes, amanfromMars, the WS answers the purpose. But there are rumours in the tube, that the GRU is likely to be dismissed/reorganized soon. Who's gotta care for the Wall Street then...
re> AC 23 Mar 1458 - "Mine's the one with the portable EMP generator in the pocket": Comrade AC, you may surely call Russia the USSR as it's widely welcome in the country. But you have to take the EMP device away of your pocket, for God does not provide spare balls.
Story: a Russian GRU resident is having a setting-up meeting with an American. The yankee asks: "Oh, am I a spy now"? The rez replies, "No, I'm a spy, and you're a traitor".
...just for the possible case of flying cows.
73
Really?
"Nashi" is "anti-fascist" when translated?
That's a bit like finding out that "Vatican city" unexpectedly translates as "Porn shop"......
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