Study warns of cyber warfare during military conflicts

August 17th, 2009

Study warns of cyber warfare during military conflicts

Posted: 04:23 PM ET

By Jeanne Meserve

CNN Homeland Security Correspondent

WASHINGTON (CNN) — An independent research group predicts cyber warfare will accompany future military conflicts, and is recommending international action to blunt it's impact.

The non-profit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit studied the cyber tactics used against the country of Georgia during its military conflict with Russia last year. Cyber attacks in August 2008 shut down the Web sites of critical Georgian government agencies, the media and banks.

"The Russians have developed a model here that is very effective," said Scott Borg, director of US-CCU. Because of the sensitive nature of much of the information, the full 100-page report is being released only to U.S. government officials and selected cyber-security professionals. CNN was provided a nine-page summary.

The study concludes that the cyber attacks against Georgian targets were carried out by civilians, many of them recruited via social networking forums devoted to dating, hobbies and politics.

"There was a large-scale collaboration on these forums," said US-CCU's chief technical officer, John Bumgarner. "They were used to recruit potential actors to launch attacks, to collaborate on what types of attacks worked and what types of attacks didn't work. They were used to collaborate on how to bypass security controls and share attack codes."