The Foreign Service Journal, October 2008

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 9 A Cybersecurity Wake-Up Call? Whatever its ultimate outcome, the conflict between Georgia and Russia over the autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia may be remembered, among other things, as one of the first in which cyberwarfare played a significant role. As such, it could qualify as a “Web security wake- up call,” in the words of Berlin-based technology consultant Evgeny Moro- zov. “In terms of the scope and interna- tional dimension of this attack, it’s a landmark,” Ronald J. Deibert, direc- tor of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, told the Washington Post on Aug. 14. “International laws are very poorly developed,” he added. “Is an information blockade an act of war?” The assault against Georgia’s Internet infrastructure began almost two months before the first shots were fired in South Ossetia, according to researchers who monitor Internet traffic into and out of countries. It consisted of “denial of service” attacks, where a particular site is bom- barded with millions of requests that overload the server and cause it to shut down. Cheap and easy to mount, such attacks are not uncommon; it was, however, the first time one coin- cided with actual fighting. Though Georgia is not as depen- dent on the Internet as other nations, the attack obstructed the govern- ment’s communications with its citi- zens and others. For example, the Georgian Foreign Ministry’s Web site was disabled except for a collage com- paring President Mikheil Saakashvili to Adolf Hitler. To get around the blockade, Georgian officials relocated national Web sites to addresses hosted by Google’s Blogspot, whose U.S. servers are less vulnerable to attack. Details of the attacks were com- piled by researchers at the Citizen Lab ( www.citizenlab.org/ ), opened seven years ago by Deibert with grant money from the Ford Foundation at the university’s Munk Center for International Studies. The organiza- tion serves as the technological back- bone for the operation of nearly 100 researchers — who call themselves “hacktivists” — in 70 countries who are mapping Web traffic around the world, monitoring how it is routed through countries and identifying where Web sites are blocked. With colleague Rafal Rohozinski, Deibert also launched the Infor- mation Warfare Monitor ( www.info war-monitor.net/ ) to investigate how the Internet is used by state mil- itary and political operations. The two also helped begin the OpenNet Initiative ( http://opennet.net/ ), a collaboration with Harvard Law School and Cambridge and Oxford universities that tracks patterns of Internet censorship in countries, such as China, that use filters. As Deibert explained in an Aug. 26 Washington Post article, there are a number of private companies that specialize in cybersecurity, as well as nonprofit organizations that have formed cybersurveillance projects. One of the latter, shadowserver ( www.shadowserver.org/wiki/ ), a group of 10 volunteers who post their findings about cyberattacks online, spotted the first denial of service attack against the president of Geor- gia’s Web site on July 20. In Washington, the Bush adminis- tration’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative — a highly classified, multiyear, multibillion-dol- lar project to secure government computer systems and prepare for future threats ( www.securityfocus. com/brief/733 ) —has taken pride of place in the proposed Fiscal Year 2009 intelligence budget, with the single largest request for funds. C YBERNOTES G eorgia’s emergence as a young democracy has been part of an inspir- ing and hopeful new chapter in Europe's history. For the first time in memory, Europe is becoming a continent that is whole, free and at peace. Unfortunately, Russia has tended to view the expansion of freedom and democracy as a threat to its interests. The opposite is true: Free and pros- perous societies on Russia's borders will advance Russia's interests by serving as sources of stability and economic opportunity. — President George W. Bush, speaking in the Rose Garden on Aug. 15 about Russia’s invasion of Georgia, www.whitehouse.gov