Last year, at the same time in that Georgia was under a military attack from Russia, also was attacked by hackers that dropped many of their sites suffered also. American researchers published a report recently affirming that those attacks came from internet users and from Russian gangs, all civil and without any involvement with the government.

According to with the report of US Cyber Consequences Unit (US-CCU) the attacks were accomplished by two different groups. The first of them used botnets, command channels and control and other resources used usually by Russian criminal gangs informed Scott Borg, director of US-CCU.

A second group was formed by common Russian citizens, no linked to the government or the armed forces, which voluntarily installed in their PCs improvised softwares that targeted other 43 sites of Georgia, those linked to agencies of news and other groups. Most of those civil ones was Russian, but people of sympathetic countries to Russia as Ukraine also participated.

The cyber attacks, which happened in August 2008 along with the military attacks, brought many problems to the Georgian, once they hindered the communication between the government and the population, impeding the flow of information about the war. To the whole 11 government sites suffered attacks of DDoS, a system that drops a site for excess of traffic. Some were offline for more than one week.

As conclusion, the report shows that that is a tendency that should begin to accompany the next conflicts, as the one that is happening in Iran.

Via: Wall Street Journal.