The Russian authorities denied the allegations that they were responsible for the attacks, instead pointing the finger at ordinary citizens. RBN was considered to be one of leading cyber crime networks in the world, whose founder allegedly is related to an influential person in Russian politics. Dancho Danchev, a Bulgarian Internet security analyst, claimed that the Russian attacks on Georgian websites used “all the success factors for total outsourcing of the bandwidth capacity and legal responsibility to the average Internet user.” Security researcher for
Arbor Networks Jose Nazario told
CNET that Georgian assault on the website of Russian newspaper served as a proof of actual Georgian response to the cyber attacks. Don Jackson, an employee of
Secureworks, observed that
botnets were prepared to attack Georgia in advance before the war. These botnets became operational just before Russian bombing of Georgia commenced on 9 August. The
CNN reported that according to specialists, the cyberwar against Georgia "signals a new kind of cyberwar, one for which the United States is not fully prepared." The ex-chief of
Computer Emergency Response Team of Israel, Gadi Evron, believed the attacks on Georgian internet infrastructure resembled a cyber-rampage, rather than cyber-warfare. Evron admitted that although the attacks could be "indirect Russian (military) action," the attackers "could have attacked more strategic targets or eliminated the (Georgian Internet) infrastructure kinetically." Six distinct
botnets, managed by distinct servers, were accounted for by
Shadowserver Foundation. Jonathan Zittrain, one of the founders of Harvard's
Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, said that the Russian army was capable of targeting Georgia's Internet infrastructure, while Bill Woodcock, the research director at
Packet Clearing House, suggested the attacks were professionally "coordinated". The Russian newspaper, pro-Georgian Skandaly.ru, was also targeted by attacks, upon which Woodcock commented "This was the first time that they ever attacked an internal and an external target as part of the same attack." The attack script against Georgia was discovered on almost every Russian news site by Gary Warner, an expert at the
University of Alabama at
Birmingham. In March 2009, Greylogic researchers assumed that the attacks were possibly conducted by Russian
GRU and the
FSB, who used the Stopgeorgia.ru forum as a facade to cover up the state responsibility. John Bumgarner, member of the United States Cyber Consequences Unit (US-CCU) did a research on the cyberattacks during the Russo-Georgian War. The report, published in August 2009, concluded that the 2008 Russian cyber warfare against Georgia stressed the importance of worldwide partnership to ensure cyber safety. The report stated that the Russian military planning was known to the cyber attackers, who were supposedly civilians. Bumgarner’s research concluded that "The first wave of cyber-attacks launched against Georgian media sites were in line with tactics used in military operations." "Most of the cyber-attack tools used in the campaign appear to have been written or customized to some degree specifically for the campaign against Georgia," the research stated. The attackers possibly knew that the invasion of Georgia would begin before it even started.
Michael Chertoff wrote in 2011 that the 2008 war demonstrated that the cyber war was the war of the future. The US
Department of Defense published the first cyber strategy. ==See also==