Information Warfare: November 18, 2002

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Someone out there has declared war on pro-Chechen web sites. At the same time Russian commandos stormed into a Moscow theater held by Chechen terrorists on October 26th, electronic attacks on two popular Chechen web sites managed to shut the sites down. Two sites, chechenpress.com and kavkaz.org, have long been sources of Chechen views on what is going on in the Chechen war. Russia considers the two sites to be sources of inaccurate propaganda. Chechenpress.com was hit with a DDOS attack (a flood of electronic information that prevented anyone else from getting in.) Kavkaz.org mysteriously had it's registration (ownership according to the Internet) changed and it was taken off line. The Chechens moved their content to www.kavkazcenter.com, but that site then came under DDOS attack. The Russian FSB (similar to the FBI) denied it was responsible for these attacks. But Russian contains a lot of Internet talent and the government is known to have created a cyberwar capability. Thus it was possible for Russia to have unleashed its cyberwarriors on the Chechen web sites.