The fights and quarrels between Russia and Georgia seem to have found a second long-term battlefield over the Internet. At first, the attacks targeted the Georgian government’s Web sites, with the country being certain that the Russians were behind the offence.

The strategy involved the use of defacement and denial of service attacks, which are used to reroute Internet traffic and also block users from accessing the Web pages. Some of the biggest concerns were raised with the attacks on the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ and Ministry of Defense’s Web sites and also the Georgian presidential Website, which were all inaccessible due to the DOS attacks.

At this point, the cyberattacks seem to have turned into a two-way street, with the Russian government reporting several security breaches on several news and popular Web sites. The state-sponsored news organization RIA Novosti complained about a series of denial of service attacks which led to the Web site’s inoperability for several hours. Also, a South Ossetian government Web site was blocked for many hours as a result of similar attacks.  

Even though each country blames the other for the Internet security breaches, nobody seems to be willing to take responsibility, strongly denying any implication in the matter. Researchers looking into the situation have found several leads, each taking them to a different place. The problem is that the technology today allows numerous possibilities for hiding an identity and a location, making it extremely hard to successfully get a hold of such a cyber attacker.