Caught in a Cyber-War, Georgia Turns to Google's Blogger

Hopefully you're not so into the Olympics that you haven't taken note of the clash between Russia and Georgia. As of the time of this writing, Georgia claims that by capturing a strategic city, Russia has now cut the country in half. But they also claim Russia is conducting a cyber-war, so how is Georgia getting the news out? Enter Google's Blogger service.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia has created a Blogger site for updates. Going to Georgia's official government site gets you nothing but a timeout message. The official website of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was up for a while, but it's down again as well.

Blogger has no such issues, and Georgia is using it to get the word out.

One of the posts addresses the outage, and says:

A cyber warfare campaign by Russia is seriously disrupting many Georgian websites, including that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If you cannnot access official Georgian government websites, please go to the following sites for the latest official Government of Georgia news.

• http://georgiamfa.blogspot.com/ (this site)
  

• The website of the President of the Republic of Poland Lech Kaczyński: www.president.pl (go to the link: "information about the latest developments in Georgia.")

According to Jart Armin, a researcher who runs a website which tracks the Russian Business Network (RBN), a cybercrime organization with close links to the Russian mafia and government, has released data claiming to show that visits to Georgian sites had been re-routed through servers in Russia and Turkey, where the traffic was blocked. Armin said the servers:

"are well known to be under the control of RBN and influenced by the Russian Government."