The DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on August 6th that brought down Twitter and severely degraded Facebook and LiveJournal was targeting a Georgian activist who is an outspoken critic of Russia’s Georgia policy. Media reports, and the target himself, allege that Russians may be behind the attack.
This is not the first time that Russian based hackers have launched attacks against Georgian targets. During the Russia-Georgia conflict last summer, well organized Russian hackers launched attacks to take down Georgia’s cyber infrastructure. A multi-disciplinary team of researchers from around the world formed Project Grey Goose and used Palantir to search for connections between the attacks and state sponsorship through Open Source means. Here are Phase I and Phase II of their findings.
Members of the IC who are interested in learning more about Project Grey Goose’s current areas of concentration can contact Jeff Carr at jeffreyc@greylogic.us.