Georgian Sites Moved to US Host

• By The WHIR, August 12, 2008

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By Anastasia Tubanos, theWHIR.com

August 12, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- According to reports on Monday, the website of the president of Georgia was transferred to a US-based hosting provider over the weekend after allegedly being attacked by Russian hackers.

In a twist of irony, Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili's website president.gov.ge (president.gov.ge) was moved to servers at Tulip Systems (tshost.com), based in Atlanta, Georgia, after the original servers in Georgia were "flooded and blocked by Russians," said Tulip Systems CEO Nino Doijashvili in an interview with AP on Monday.

Based on the company website, Tulip Systems has two data centers in Atlanta, totaling around 3,100 square feet of data center space, and has had "about a 1,000,000 members since 1995."

The president of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, has also lent space on his own English-language website to Georgia's president as a demonstration of international solidarity.

The Georgian-born Doijashvili was on vacation in Georgia when the fighting broke out on Friday. She then immediately called the government to offer her help and transferred the president's website, as well as rustavi2.com (rustavi2.com), the website of a prominent Georgian TV station, to her company's servers.

Doijashvili says the attacks can be traced to Moscow and St. Petersburg and are continuing on the US servers. The president's website was intermittently available on Monday.

As of 11:00 a.m. ET Tuesday, the site seems to be readily accessible.

Meanwhile, hackers have moved the war beyond the physical landscape into the virtual realm, as they engage in cyber war.

Shadowserver Foundation, a website that tracks Internet attacks, says it had noticed commands to attack Georgian sites over the weekend being issued to botnets being used to "send bogus traffic to the websites."

According to reports on NetworkWorld, President Saakashvili's website may have been under DDos attack since Thursday.

Georgia has been battling Russian forces over the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia, which separated from Georgia in the early '90s and has since then been run by a Russian-backed seperatist government, according to reports on the CBC.

Georgia launched its attack on Friday and Russia responded by sending about 2,500 troops into the territory.

On Monday night at the UN Security Council, Russian diplomats rejected a draft ceasefire resolution put forward by France. The resolution was subsequently backed by seven of the G8 group of nations, including the US, Canada, France, Japan, Italy, Britain and Germany.

However, as of Tuesday, Russia has ordered a halt to its military action in Georgia.

Tags:  government  security  Asia  hackers  Google  Iona 

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