Most of the experts now agree that cyber attacks started well before lead started flying and were not very sophisticated by current standards. Most of the attacks were run of the mill DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) type events designed to deface and shut down government sites.
One of the problems is that no one can actually pin the attacks to the Russians. As usual, botnets of zombie computers were used to facilitate the assault on the sites in question. Since these zombie computers are taken over by malicious software — normally after an unsuspecting user clicks on a link in a spam e-mail — the computers used in the attack probably resided in locations all over the world. Botnets are also used to send out the spam e-mails with the malicious links that turn systems into what are known as zombie computers, which add to the power of the botnet.
Researchers at Shadowserver, a volunteer group monitoring cyber attacks, have traced the attacks against Georgia as starting in July and being based out of the United States, according to an article in the New York Times. The Times article suggested that there might be ties in this attack to Russian organized cyber criminals.
It should be noted that the words Russia and cyber crime bring up pages of results on most search engines. Russian organized crime is also known to have a global reach so it is no surprise that some of the current DDOS attacks were traced to a server in the United States. Simply stated, these attacks can be made to appear as if they are coming from just about anywhere.
Article Author: Ed Dickson
Having worked around financial crimes for a number of years, I noticed they seemed to be on the rise. One reason for this is technology, which grows more rapidly than laws designed to protect us from it. …
Article comments