Russia kicked off its new war against Georgia by launching
a preliminary cyberattack against various Georgian government sites –
the digital equivalent of the long artillery barrages that traditionally preceded all-out ground assaults. Only this time, botnets and Denial of Service attacks replaced howitzers and exploding shot. Last September, Wired ran a three-piece package on
cyber-warfare that accused Russia of sponsoring a cyberattack on Estonia in May,
2007. We predicted more to come, though not everyone agreed with us.
In fact, our own web site's defense blog, Danger Room, hosted by my colleague and NY office mate, Noah Shachtman (who knows a lot more about this stuff than I ever will) was unwilling to blame the Kremlin or treat the Estonian incident as anything more than the work of some overeager hackers.
There was no smoking gun, so in several posts, Danger Room cast repeated aspersions on the "Blame Russia" position. Nevermind that our reporter actually went to Tallinn and Moscow to investigate. My position was that we are a magazine,not a court of law, and if it quacks like a duck...
We also emphasized that this early assault was merely a harbinger of worse to come. Well, I wonder how Danger Room and the New York Times (who also pooh-poohed the Estonia attacks last year) feel about it now. They've both been taking the current situation much more seriously, here and here.
UPDATE: Noah has his reaction online now. Check it out at the Danger Room.
