Russian Hacker performs a new attack tactic

Russian Hacker has stolen personal information in the US, combined with commercial software and social networks to organize destructive attacks on the Internet .

This is the discovery of a research organization called US Cyber ​​Consequences Unit (USCCU) after more than a year of research on the attacks on Georgian government websites.

' Stealing personal information, using social networks and modifying commercial software to attack is the old' tactics' of hackers, but combining all of these forms into a type of attack. The new public has shown that their 'skills' have been raised to a new level and we have never met them before, ' said Amit Yoran, a former leader of the cybersecurity department of the US Department of Homeland Security. stated.

The cyberattacks that took place in August 2008 heavily affected Georgia's information system with about 20 websites including the President's website, the Minister of Defense, the national bank and many papers. Big newspapers were paralyzed for more than a week.

'American corporations and individuals need to understand that they can be turned into' pawns 'in global virtual wars ,' said John Bumgarner, USCCU's chief technology officer and former employee. Network security senior of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned.

Amy Kudwa, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said she could not comment on unpublished information.

USCCU has just submitted its 100-page report to the US government and has just released about 9 pages of initial conclusions about its investigation and research process.

According to USCCU, attacks on the Georgian government website system last year were conducted by Russian organized crime groups and have absolutely nothing to do with the Russian government.

However, according to John Bumgarner, these attacks occurred only hours after the Russo-Georgian war occurred that made people suspicious.

" Russian officials and troops have absolutely nothing to do with cyber attacks last year ," said Yevgeniy Khorishko, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington.

Bumgarner said that when tracking the attacks, USCCU found 10 websites registered in Russia and Turkey with 9 websites registered with personal information of US citizens and a website. Register with the information of a French citizen.

The initial disclosure of the USCCU said that all 10 websites were used and coordinated to become a botnet and control thousands of ghost computers scattered around the globe to attack Georgia.

Some of the software used in these attacks are Microsoft products but are modified by the culprit. " It's software for network administrators to test the system and its code is available for free on Microsoft's website ," Bumgarner said, but declined to say what software it was.

Microsoft spokesman also declined to comment on the findings.

As soon as the culprit launched a botnet attack, a series of other web services like online forums, Twitter or Facebook also unknowingly became attackers.

" This is a problem ," said Barry Schnitt, a Facebook spokesman, because while the social network has tools for authenticating users and detecting abnormal behavior of users, it does not. can monitor the communication between users.