Report: Kyrgyzstan under massive DOS attack

Greg Walton, who is Editor of The Infowar Monitor, says:

Kyrgyzstan is under a massive denial of service attack.

Last week IWMP received a phone call from a colleague in Central Asia. Apparently, Kyrgyzstan is under a massive denial of service attack. Three of four ISPs have been taken down, and their upstream providers in Russia, and Kazakhstan are refusing to pass traffic because of the scale of the attacks. At this stage, the motivation appears to be political, and follows several political/mass media websites which have been blocked in the past two weeks by Kyrgyz authorities. The suspicion is that the current DOS attacks are commercial -- commissioned and similar to those we reported back in 2005.

Link to report.

• [Takuan]

  I know, I really wanted to come up with a good one, but I got nothing.

• [Takuan]

  http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_KYRGYZSTAN_US_BASE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-02-03-12-49-12

• [ekricyote]

  Reminds me of the similar nature of the cyber attacks on Estonia, something that was of notable interest to cyber guru’s specializing in security was dismissed as “an unimportant example” by the vice directors at the Institute of Information Security Issues at Lomonosov Moscow State University.

  Wonder what the scale of this one will be once cyber smoke has clared.

• [yurei]

  This sounds like a job for…Black Dynamite.

• [zyodei]

  Funny, I had a dream about a month ago somehow involving computer hacking in Kyrgystan…no joke.

  I don’t remember the details exactly, but I remember being in Kyrgystan and dealing with a restrictive government filters on the slow dialup Internet…

  Weird dream!

  Maybe I was sleep-DDOSing?

• [Takuan]

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7923702.stm

• [citizen_usa]

  It’s a series of tubes. Get in line, Kyrgs.

• [Takuan]

  a clew

  http://eng.24.kg/community/2009/01/12/6804.html

• [Takuan]

  http://news-en.trend.az/politics/foreign/1406778.html

• [Takuan]

  got to feel for them
  http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insightb/articles/eav012209b.shtml

• [Takuan]

  think you had it bad?
  http://www.iwpr.net/?p=rca&s=f&o=349265&apc_state=henh

• [Arminius]

  I bet someone just commented out the “win” line in their AUTOEXEC.BAT.

• [Takuan]

  an oil-less kakistocracy of little strategic import?
  One of the gangs fighting for the throne must have hired some Russian hackers.

• [nanuq]

  Maybe someone is doing a trial run for something even bigger with another country. It’s hard to imagine why poor Kyrgystan would be targeted otherwise.

• [Ken_K]

  How many computers do they even have in a place like that? Less infastructure means it’s probably easier to hack too.

• [Anonymous]

  Kyrgyzstan is the only nation to have both a U.S. AND a Russian military base within it’s borders. It’s an insignificant country on the global stage but a player on the ‘Stanscape and strategically well-located, what with being a short flight from Afghanistan, sharing a border with China, etc.

• [Takuan]

  CIA Factbook should say.

• [Takuan]

  https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kg.html

  750,00 users

• [Willie McBride]

  It’s Kyrgyzstan.

  From Kyrgyz.

• [arkizzle]

  Ken K

  Kyrgyzstan Internet Usage:
  Year: 2000
  Internet users: 51,600
  Population: 5,377,484
  % Pen: 0.1 %
  GDP: US$ 410

  Year: 2005
  Internet users: 280,000
  Population: 5,377,484
  % Pen: 5.1 %
  GDP: US$ 450

  Year: 2007
  Internet users: 298,100
  Population: 5,436,608
  % Pen: 5.5 %
  GDP: US$ 440

  Source ITU

• [zuzu]

  I bet someone just commented out the “win” line in their AUTOEXEC.BAT.

  win :

  Nobody wants to see the Windows 3.1 startup screen.

• [arkizzle]

  Hmm.. untally.

• [grimc]

  an oil-less kakistocracy of little strategic import?

  The US has an airbase in Kyrgystan that it’s been using for operations in Afghanistan. Last week the government announced that it was going to close the base because of pressure from Russia. The US said it would give Kyrgystan a bunch of money to keep it open.

• [biffpow]

  In theory, it’s Russian hackers, gov’t commissioned. It’s about oil and as a side to that the US base plays into it, but not as the primary. Basic strategy: make a mess of the communications there so no one wants to route business/$ data through. Russia offers to play cleanup; Russia legally moves in their people to “fix” it and never moves them out.

  The issue here is you have four ISPs. Four. With relative limited usage country-wide. This is a DoS attack too, which is inarguably effective, but not exactly sophisticated. That happens in the US or EU, it gets fixed in hours. It’s annoying, but it gets fixed with some degree of speed. Over there, it’s a more serious issue due to vulnerability of data and lack of ISPs.

  Of course, we’re only getting wire reports on this–like Takuan, I agree actual ground intel would be more helpful. It’s worth watching if only to see if the US steps in to assist (which they should, if only to learn from).

• [Takuan]

  that still going on?

• [Takuan]

  ah yes
  http://www.rferl.org/content/Air_Base_At_Center_Of_Kyrgyz_Talks_With_Moscow_Washington_/1371962.html

• [Takuan]

  here’s a thought; the world knows the CIA is armpit deep in cocaine trade (eg: the three tonnes they dropped out the Mexican sky with), how important is heroin to the CIA? Kyrgystan is an opium corridor, the big push into Afghanistan will guarantee a big push of opium out, who’s making the money here?

• [Takuan]

  I also see Kyrgystan come up in listings of CIA secret torture gulag “black sites”. Not really a problem for them though I suppose, just load up the one or two actual value “subjects” and quietly kill the rest. All you’d need was a Cessna.

• [coldspell]

  PC-DOS forever!

• [desiredusername]

  Conficker?

• [markjamesmurphy]

  Hopefully, Clinton will deploy vowels there.

• [Takuan]

  dunno, any ground intel?

• [lego7]

  @16

  I only came to this thread to make a comment along the lines of “Now maybe they’ll come under a vowel attack”

  Damn you!

• [ian_b]

  @7 “GDP: US$ 440″

  And we thought our economy was in the tank!

• [teeman]

  Interestingly, about 8 years ago, the company that I was working for was hit hard by a bunch of spammers and viruses originating in Kyrgyzstan.
  It was a pain in the ass for a couple of weeks.
  What goes around….

• [Takuan]

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7873866.stm

• [seanubis]

  /me scans comments for vowel jokes… dang.