August 19, 2008
ATTACKS by Russian hackers against Georgian websites, including one hosted in the US, have continued despite Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordering a halt to hostilities against Georgia.
Tom Burling, acting chief executive of Atlanta-based web host Tulip Systems, said the website of the president of Georgia was the target of a flood of traffic from Russia intended to overwhelm the site.Mr Burling said bogus traffic outnumbered legitimate traffic by 5000 to one at president.gov.ge.
"Our people aren't getting any sleep," Mr Burling said.
Tulip's firewall was blocking most of the malicious traffic.
The site has been periodically inaccessible.
Mr Burling said the attacks had been reported to the FBI.
The site was transferred from servers in Georgia on Saturday.
Georgian-born Nino Doijashvili, Tulip's chief executive and founder, happened to be in the country on vacation when fighting broke out on Thursday. Mr Doijashvili offered help to the government when it became apparent that Russian hackers were getting the upper hand, shutting down several government and news sites.
The US-based Shadowserver Foundation, which tracks internet attacks, said it had noticed commands to attack Georgian sites being issued over the weekend to botnets - networks of computers that have been surreptitiously controlled by hackers.
The computers are used to send bogus traffic to targeted sites, slowing them or in some cases bringing them down.
The same botnets are also targeting Russian news sites and the website of Gary Kasparov, the Russian chess player and political activist, according to Steven Adair at Shadowserver.
On Monday, hackers took over the website of Georgia's parliament and replaced it with an image that drew parallels between Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili and Adolf Hitler, Mr Adair said.
AP