The Georgian/ Russian engagement over South Ossetia was also fought on a battlefield beyond our ken – in cyberspace. Websites on both sides were knocked out in concerted attacks, particularly against Georgia. These aggressive web campaigns have happened before, as they did during Russia’s disputes with Baltic States, Estonia and Lithuania in the last couple of years. However, ramping up the significance of cyberwar, this time the web attacks were launched simultaneously with physical ground and air attacks. The Independent, in a well researched news piece on the development, quotes Dr David Betz of King;s College, London’s War Studies Department as saying: ‘The US has already created units for cyberdefence, so too has China and, no doubt, Russia and probably many others’.
A huge advantage of cyber attack is that the identity of the aggressor is obscured whereas, if you get hit with a missile, you know where it has come from. Cyber war is also very cheap and easy to mount. It only takes a single hacker or a small dedicated group to cause significant harm. According to the New York Times, quoting the Research Director of an American internet traffic tracking company, it costs about four cents (two pence) per machine. “You could fund an entire cyber-warfare campaign for the cost of replacing a tank tread.” The cyberwar over South Ossetia saw the sites of the Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs taken out, along with online English language sites, ‘The Messenger’ and ‘Civil’ and Georgian President Saakashvili’s personal site. Countries under attack in this way can find themselves without their emergency response systems. Such conflicts are about ensuring absence rather than presence. This means that we don’t know they’re going on – and those silenced cannot tell us.