Political cyber attacks on growth curve in Eastern Europe

Russia’s United Civil Front website – run by former chess champion Garry Kasparov – along with the website of the Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations, were hit by a denial of service (DOS) attack at the end of last month. Similar denial of service attacks hit the sites of Russian newspaper Kommersant and the Echo of Moscow radio station in early May. Says Geoff Sweeney, CTO of behavioural analysis at IT security firm Tier-3: “The attacks are indicative of the rising level of electronic unrest in the former Soviet Union. With the Russian elections coming up at the end of this year, I expect the problem to get worse, rather than better. “This is a clear warning to organisations of the need to ensure that their Internet-connected computer systems, as well as websites, are protected from the devastating effects that a ODS attack can cause. “The big question is whether they will not only be ready to defend against the standard DOS and DDOS type attacks, but also will they be able to withstand the next generation of low bandwidth, complex DOS attacks we’ve seen here in the west. “Application specific DOS attacks are designed to mimic legitimate user interaction and target the backend IT systems, which are typically less resistant to attack and more difficult to defend.”