Study Warns of Cyberwarfare During Military Conflicts
An independent research group predicts that cyberwarfare will accompany future military conflicts and is recommending international action to blunt its impact. The nonprofit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit studied the cybertactics used against the country of Georgia during its military conflict with Russia last year. Cyberattacks in August 2008 shut down the Web sites of crucial Georgian government agencies, the media and banks.
“The Russians have developed a model here that is very effective,” said Scott Borg, director of US-CCU. “We can expect to see the Russians use it in the future, and other countries as well.”
Because of the sensitive nature of much of the information, the full 100-page report is being released only to U.S. government officials and selected cybersecurity professionals. CNN was provided a nine-page summary.
The study concludes that the cyberattacks against Georgian targets were carried out by civilians, many of them recruited via social networking forums devoted to dating, hobbies and politics.
“There was a large-scale collaboration on these forums,” said US-CCU’s chief technical officer, John Bumgarner. “They were used to recruit potential actors to launch attacks, to collaborate on what types of attacks worked and what types of attacks didn’t work. They were used to collaborate on how to bypass security controls and share attack codes.”
As a result, Borg said, Russian sympathizers who were not hackers, and who didn’t even know much about computers, could participate.
