Hackers go down to Georgia

Russian hackers are again suspected of political cyber-attacks

A distributed denial-of-service attack brought down a government website in Georgia this weekend.

The official site of Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, was taken down by the attackers on Saturday and Sunday, according to researchers.

The attacks were first recorded in the early hours of Saturday morning and continued into Sunday.

While researchers could not pinpoint the exact source of the attacks, early evidence points to sources within neighbouring Russia.

Arbor Networks chief analyst Jose Nazario reported that one of the messages sent in the data flood read 'win+love+in+Russia'.

Meanwhile, researchers at security group Shadow Server noted that the software used in the attacks has been linked to Russian botnets.

Formerly a Soviet republic, Georgia has been at odds with Russia on a number of diplomatic and military issues in recent years.

The incident is reminiscent of last year's cyber-attacks in Estonia following the removal of Soviet war memorials in the country.

The move angered Russian nationalists who formed a "flash mob" and launched a series of coordinated attacks which crippled Estonia's infrastructure for days.

"Distributed DoS attacks against various neighbours of Russia have been quite popular in the past few years," said Shadow Server researcher Steven Adair.

"Is the attack political or perhaps nationalistic in nature? Your guess is as good as ours but it doesn't take much to come to this possible conclusion."

Nazario added that the attacks highlight the growing role of global conflicts in web security.

"I have to admit that when these sorts of attacks appear, I often have to race to learn political history and tensions and relationships," he wrote.

"I'm no expert at geopolitics, and as these sorts of attacks increase their analysis is ever the more interesting."