August 27, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- According to reports on Tuesday, the government of Estonia is temporarily hosting two of Georgia's key websites to protect them from hackers.
Specifically, Estonia has agreed to host the websites of Georgia's central bank and Foreign Ministry. The country is also hosting a Georgian-English language news portal, according to reports by the Associated Press.
The state-run Estonian Informatics Centre says Georgia has transferred key websites to servers in other countries, including Poland and France, after some came under attack following the outbreak of war with Russia 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 separatist government.
"This is a way to help Georgia make their web pages visible to the world," said Katrin Pargmae, a spokeswoman for the Estonian centre in an interview with AP.
It seems cyber attacks have been particularly prevalent for Georgia amidst this war, especially following the DDoS attacks in early August on Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili's website president.gov.ge (president.gov.ge) as well as rustavi2.com (rustavi2.com), the website of a prominent Georgian TV station. Those websites have been transferred to servers at web hosting provider Tulip Systems in the US.
Although it hasn't been disclosed as to where these recent attacks are originating from, the ones earlier this month have been traced to Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia.