Cyberwars: A Community of Hacktevists

Engaging the hacking/hacktevist community in cyberwarfare is not new. We have good communities and we have not-so-good communities of people, offline and online. Globally bringing together the like-minded in a matter of minutes is what the internet does well. It also allows internet users to collaborate and make things happen - again, for the good of humanity or to our collective detriment. Leaving aside the moral issues, it's fascinating to see how quickly communities mobilize when the "bell rings."

In the past few weeks, Russia has invaded Georgia's internet space with Hacktevist activity. Independent security consultant and cyber threat analyst Dancho Danchev has written a blog article about the cyber conflict.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1670

The ZDNet article is interesting to me because though cyber-warfare is not new, there seems to be a heightened pedestrian interest in cyberwar as it relates to physical war. The article also interests me because communities of hackers come together around various events, jump on the bandwagon and get heavily involved - calling their legions to action. Hacktevists might be compared to Firefighters. They sit around playing cards or surfing the net or doing whatever they do, waiting for that virtual bell to ring so they can spring into action. Russia rung the bell recently and the bandwagon is overflowing with the ready, the willing and the ...able.

"In the wake of the Russian-Georgian conflict, a week worth of speculations around Russian Internet forums have finally materialized into a coordinated cyber attack against Georgia’s Internet infrastructure. The attacks have already managed to compromise several government web sites, with continuing DDoS attacks against numerous other Georgian government sites, prompting the government to switch to hosting locations to the U.S, with Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs undertaking a desperate step in order to disseminate real-time information by moving to a Blogspot account." ...

These attacks began several weeks before the offline invasion of Georgia by Russia. Danchev reports that "In a statement released via a replacement website built on Google’s blog-hosting service, the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: 'A cyber warfare campaign by Russia is seriously disrupting many Georgian websites, including that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.' ”

A slight aside:
Danchev implies that the US may be involved in the masterminding of the DDoS attacks. Apparently the 'hacktevists' managed to hack into the Georgian President's website and put up a montage of photos side by side of the Georgian President and Hitler - psychological warfare (psyops) at the very least. The reporter doesn't believe the average hacker is intelligent enough to do this on their own. I'm don't agree - hackers/hacktevists are usually quite clever, in my experience. I'm sure the "three letter agency" the reporter refers to employs "former" hackers, so it's really a moot point. And it's a bit odd that the US would assist in or mastermind this since Georgia is currently the US's pet democracy project. And there are noises from the Administration about putting troops in Georgia. Regardless, this particular PSYOPs is likely to be quite effective. So effective in fact that the BBC reported this morning that "many South Ossetians compare the Georgian President to Hitler." Was that reporting perpetuated by the Hitler montage or was it the result of unsolicited information separate and apart from the Hitler comparison on the President's website?

The article has quite a bit of well-researched information about who all is involved in the cyberwar. It's worth reading, whether you're technically inclined or not.

Communities.
So back to my particular point - the article is not so much about recognising the community of Hacktevists as it is about the larger community of Activists. The Activist community can respond to bells too and rally when the time comes. We see this behavior in online communities of all types. It's basic human behavior - we are desperate to be part of a group: the good guys, the so-called bad guys, and the fence sitters. The internet is our method of transportation for communication. It provides communities the tools needed to spring into action on a global level at a rapid rate. Here's to this particular effort being successful and possibly saving lives.

Danchev says it well, below.

He says, "Overall, contingency planning in times when you need to spread a message about what’s going in your country, but have Russian vs Georgia Cyber Attack you official government sites logically the de facto information sources in such cases shut down, is crucial for reaching out to the rest of the world who would disseminate the message using the long tail. Then again, this is perhaps the first time in such a cyber conflict –aiming to deny the targeted country’s ability to reach the world with real-time information on the real-life warfare events — where the targeted country is urging others to obtain this information through a third country President’s web site, in this case Poland, and using a blog to do so."