Several points; 1. Red Cross has not been allowed in to the hardest hit area in SO which allows propaganda to flow out, administration of health and services reporting has been non existent.
2. Satellites saw the massing of tanks on the Russian side, the 25th infantry division its tanks APC & support vehicles create quite an image when seen from above.
this means that the surprise attack by Georgia into SO was actually a counter attack, launched on a tip off, which allowed Georgian military to inflict casualties on the entering force. The move had it not been made, would have given the division a clean entry into the capital of SO.
3. Cyber attacks began days before the conflict, one such report copied below.
4. 100 Russian forces had spent up to a month prior to the actions of this month, repairing rail lines in Abkhazia, these lines were subsequently used to move russian troops.
5. Russia has suffered comparatively high casualties of man and material, which were most likely not expected by russia, especially had it been able to enter SO, free and clear.
6. Russia admits to losing 2 jets including a backfire bomber. Georgia claims ten aircraft have been downed. If Georgia is right, that is a huge tell about a lot of things not being told.
7. should Georgia get air support........and some support from external navies.....things could regress rather dramatically, as the exits out of the areas now occupied, are very problematic, now that the battlefield has been shaped.
War 2.0 -- Russia v. Georgia
The second real cyber was has broken out. On August 8th, Russian troops crossed into South Ossetia vowing to defend what they called "Russian compatriots". As this was taking place, a multi-faceted cyber attack began against the Georgian infrastructure and key government web sites. The attack modalities included: Defacing of Web Sites (Hacktivism), Web-based Psychological Operations (Psyc-Ops), a fierce propaganda campaign (PC) and of course a Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS).
Shortly after noon east coast time in the United States, CNN's Wolf Blitzer attempted to interview Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili by phone on his live news program. The first attempt was unsuccessful and the second attempt took place about ten minutes later was able to successfully connect to President Saakashvili. President Saakashvili immediately apologized for the missed connection earlier blaming the problem on a "cyber attack" against the Georgian VoIP phone system. Another causality of the cyber attack was the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) website. At one point in time the MFA's web site had an image of Adolf Hitler beside the image of President Saakashvili.
At one point(used in the sentence above), multiple government websites were down or inaccessible for hours. This led them to make perhaps the most strategic move to date in cyber warfare. This impressive move came when the Georgian Government decided to relocate President Mikhail Saakashvili's web site to a web site hosting service in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States. The strategic thinking surrounding this move was twofold. First, the Russian cyber attackers would surely think twice about attacking a web site hosted on servers located in the United States. Secondly, if the Russian cyber attackers were to go after the President's web site hosted on U.S. soil, that action might bring the United States into the conflict.
Continue reading "Cyber War 2.0 -- Russia v. Georgia" |
