Evan Ratliff

Tuesday, Aug 12, 2008 9:45 PM UTC

Cyberwar rages on in Georgia

Government sites under attack from Russian hackers move to U.S.-based servers, including Atlanta's Tulip Systems.

By Evan Ratliff

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(Updated below)

Amid the obviously more serious real-word consequences in the ongoing Russia-Georgia conflict, the parallel virtual battle has been garnering a fair amount of attention. In sum, Russian hackers have been assaulting and disabling a number of Georgia’s government Web sites — largely, its seems, by employing botnet-driven denial of service attacks — since the inception of the conflict. As always with this kind of cyberwarfare, it’s difficult to sort out whether the Russian government is actively supporting the attacks, or just the tacit beneficiary of some of its gung-ho and computer-savvy citizens. As of a few minutes ago, the main government site in Georgia remained down. There have been reports of attacks on Russian sites as well. Monday the Wall Street Journal cited investigators who claimed to have traced the attack to a notorious cybergang called the Russian Business Network, but Wired’s Danger Room found skeptics of that assessment.

So where did the Georgian government choose to turn when it became clear its own cyberdefenses couldn’t stand up? The first option was Google-owned Blogger, which now hosts a replacement site from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (whose main site was at one point defaced with a photo collage of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili alongside Hitler, but as of now is back up).

The more oddly serendipitous outcome, however, is that the Russian president’s official Web site is now being hosted in the United States, by Atlanta-based Tulip Systems. The Associated Press reported in a short story Monday that Tulip CEO Nino Doijashvili, a native Georgian (the country), happened to be vacationing there when the fighting broke out:

She cold-called the government to offer her help and transferred president.gov.ge and rustavi2.com, the Web site of a prominent Georgian TV station, to her company’s servers Saturday. Speaking via cell phone from Georgia, Doijashvili said the attacks, traced to Moscow and St. Petersburg, are continuing on the U.S. servers. The president’s site was intermittently available midday Monday. Route-tracing performed by the AP confirmed that the sites were hosted at Tulip.

As far as I can tell, Tulip — which also maintains an office in Georgia (the country) — claims no particular expertise, beyond a typical hosting company, in fending off denial of service attacks. But the site seems to be holding up at this point. The company is no doubt relieved that it upgraded its facilities just a month ago. And depending on the outcome of the conflict, it’ll no doubt be updating its “testimonials” page.

Wired’s Danger Room and ZDnet’s Zero Day are both tracking the cyberwar developments closely.

Update: A security expert contact of mine raises another question in all this: Since most of Georgia’s Internet connections likely originate in Russia, why wouldn’t the Russians just unplug the Georgians? It would seem at least as effective as denial of service attacks. The New York Times Bits blog reports that Georgia has connections through only Russia and Turkey, although the CIA World Factbook, at least, doesn’t list a Turkey-Georgia fiber connection. At least one major cable into Georgia (as of 2002, it was the only one) originates from Soti, Russia. A planned cable to Bulgaria via the Black Sea isn’t yet complete. But it’s possible, of course, that the government is predominantly utilizing a satellite link.

Update 2: An informative Popular Mechanics interview with Jart Armin, editor of RBNexploit, confirms that most Georgian traffic is routed through Russia, but doesn’t quite clear up the confusion over the attacks:

How does one fight a war like this? Can you do it from within Georgia? Or once those servers are shut down, is it something that has to be done from outside? Two things. The smaller neighbors of Russia should watch out who controls their next stage of Internet servers, the actual pipelines. Unfortunately for Georgia, they had an agreement where the main switch for most of Georgia’s Internet is through Moscow. Very logically, it’s submarine fiber roots; you can read about [it] on the CIA Web site, which actually shows the limitations of Georgia, the near-reliance on physical routing through Russia. Georgia gets taken offline fairly easily because Russia is simply blocking all traffic coming in and out. Estonia learned last year; Lithuania is learning now, as even Ukraine is starting to learn, and a few others.

So it does seem that indeed, Georgia is relying on connections through Russia. But it’s not clear what he means by “Russia is simply blocking all traffic in and out.” In the rest of the interview talks only about botnets clogging up the pipes, so my inference is that’s all he means. Which again would point to non- Russian-government entities doing the attacking (as at least one expert concurs). If it was the Russian government, why wouldn’t they just shut off the connections entirely?

Is the latest version of the “world’s first cyber war” once again not to be? Or maybe we can just start calling it something different…

Monday, Aug 11, 2008 10:36 PM UTC

Hyping the Chevy Volt

Is GM setting a new record for vaporware peddling?

By Evan Ratliff

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Chevy Volt screenshot

Is General Motors setting a new record for vaporware peddling? Given that Farhad Manjoo opened up the Machinist to auto coverage a few weeks ago, this seems fair game: Like me, you may have noticed during Olympic TV coverage the nonstop GM commercials touting the coming pinnacle of automobile evolution, the Chevy Volt. (Is there any ad that doesn’t run nonstop during the Olympics? What happened to our endemic advertising diversity?) Aiming to be the first commercially available plug-in hybrid, the Volt — as the ads inform us — will travel 40 miles without using a drop of gas. “That’s an American revolution,” it concludes. USA! USA! Let’s all head out and buy one…in 2010.

I’m no advertising historian, but I can’t think of another example of new technology being hyped with paid advertising a full two years before it is supposed to hit the market (a date that seems, given the delays in battery technology central to the car, a bit aspirational). Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite exited about the prospect of the Volt — even if the maker doesn’t inspire much confidence on the car-of-the-future front – and its competitors. But can anyone think of a technology touted with a nationwide ad campaign that far in advance of its release date? Maybe Windows XP or Vista? They certainly had the advance hype, but I don’t recall early ads.

It certainly goes to show how much pressure gas prices are putting on automakers to rebrand themselves as part of the fuel-efficient future. And GM does seem to be making a legitimate bet on this car. Here’s hoping it doesn’t become the company’s Chinese Democracy. For a great in-depth read on the whole Volt gamble, check out this fantastic Jonathan Rauch story in the July/August Atlantic. This guy also seems to be on top of all things Volt.

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Monday, Aug 11, 2008 6:58 PM UTC

Cellphones on planes, take 60

A federal bill would ban yapping in-flight -- yet a new survey shows public support for in-air yakking is on the rise.

By Evan Ratliff

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Is the tide turning for in-flight gabbing? At the end of last week, the Department of Transportation reignited the perennial cellphone-on-planes discussion with a survey showing that Americans are surprisingly ambivalent on the question. The data can be carved several ways, but the general take-away is that only about 45 percent of people surveyed thought phones “definitely” or “probably” shouldn’t be allowed in-flight. Younger folks, not surprisingly, were more open to the practice.

This comes on the heels of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s approval of Rep. Peter DeFazio’s, D-Ore., hilariously titled “Halting Airplane Noise to Give Us Peace Act of 2008,” which would — under the assumption that the FAA will eventually lift its ban on cellphones in flight, as the EU already has — establish a blanket federal prohibition on “voice communications using a mobile communications device” on board any scheduled flight. The bill is now headed for a full vote in the House. Meanwhile, internationally, Dubai-based Emirates Airlines announced on Thursday that it was moving ahead with fleet-wide plans to allow passengers to use their phones in-flight.

Setting aside for a moment the question of whether cellphone usage on flights is socially intolerable, the Emirates announcement did clear up an issue that always baffled me: Even if people were allowed to use phones on planes, wouldn’t their reception cut out at cruising altitude anyway? As the New York Times reported way back in 2001, most digital cellphones have a maximum range of six miles, give or take, so the signal at 35,000 feet would be even crappier (even if cell towers focused their signals directly upward, which they don’t) than the remarkable dead zone in my San Francisco apartment. Meaning that calls would still be limited to ascent and decent — a pretty minimal extension of the current “tarmac exception.”

But it seems Emirates and other international airlines are employing on-board gear from U.K.-based company AeroMobile (and a competitor, OnAir), whose technology routes the signal through the plane’s communications system:

“AeroMobile comprises an aircraft cabin ‘pico cell’ system that interfaces with the aircraft’s air-to-ground communications systems, typically a satellite-based system. Once transmitted to the ground, signals are sent to AeroMobile’s ground system and on to the destination mobile phone and telecoms networks around the world.”

Which, of course, is what allows the airlines to charge for the service. Technological barriers overcome, the plane/phone question continues to get people rather fired up. I’ll admit to being undecided. Like most, I’ve had many a pleasant public transit ride ruined — or unpleasant tarmac wait made that much more unpleasant — by Willie Loquacious cranking out sales calls next to me. Then again, for those considerate enough to keep things quiet and/or brief, a quick call in a public setting can be an unobtrusive convenience (of course, even many of the inconsiderate no doubt think they’re being considerate).

Either way, a federal ban seems like overkill; why not ban monopolization of the armrest while they’re at it? As Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., pointed out during recent hearings, “You are trying to legislate courtesy, folks, and that just doesn’t work.” Emirates Airline spokespeople, at least, claim that “a certain on-board etiquette has developed” in their test runs, “where passengers try to stay quiet to avoid being seen as intrusive.” And the Economist reports that 80 percent of Air France customers, after flying with cellphone service, wanted it on all their flights.

Yesterday, a Slashdot poster actually offered up a safety rationale for not banning phones, citing the story of a disabled Irish flight guided safely into the airport using SMS messages. Thankfully, my reading of the Hang Up Act finds no ban on lifesaving texts.

[Incidentally, I'll be sitting in at the Machinist all week, taking over from the eminent Denise Caruso. Regular readers may take it as fair warning that I own neither a Mac nor an iPhone, am poorly versed in the joys of Web 2.0, and have a television soon to be made obsolete by the digital changeover (hey, maybe I can get some advice from you all on that). Let's do this!]

*UPDATE*: Digging into the DOT’s numbers, I discovered that the same survey also highlights the general lack of public confidence in airline safety measures. The number of people expressing “total confidence” in screeners to “keep air travel secure” hovers at 6.4%, while “great deal of confidence” clocks in at 17% and “moderate confidence” at 44.6%. That got me thinking: If I could avoid the inane practices of removing my shoes from my feet and my laptop from my bag, in exchange for tolerating the occasional yakker in the seat next to me, I might take it.

Then I listened to the Congressional Committee’s debate on the issue, in which one Congressperson ominously pointed out that cell phones can in fact TAKE PICTURES AND VIDEO OF THE INSIDE OF THE PLANE, and thus “can be used in a very dangerous way.” So it seems like they’ve got all fronts covered on this one.

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Friday, May 12, 2006 11:31 AM UTC

O say, ma, been laden forever!

Working with your phone company, skilled NSA operatives are rounding up evil terrorists who speak Islamofascist jive.

By Evan Ratliff

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Memo: NSA headquarters, Fort Meade
Automated data mining analysis, transcript #HS48652-6
Target: Evan Ratliff
Communication: Domestic e-mail intercepts
Keyword extraction recommendation: Significant terror risk. Operations imminent.