Reporters Without Borders, The Internet as a battlefield in the South Ossetia War

Russian and Georgian websites fall victim to a
war being fought online as well as in the field
by Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders condemns the many violations of online freedom of information since the outbreak of fighting in the Georgian province of South Ossetia on 8 August, including the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on many Georgian websites, in which the servers they use are overloaded and crashed by millions of connection requests.

“The Internet has become a battleground in which information is the first victim,” Reporters Without Borders said. “On the one side, the main Georgian ISPs severed access to Russian websites. On the other side, Georgian government websites were attacked by Russian hackers. With newspapers and radio and TV stations putting out very little independent news, the Internet is a vital tool for the public, so these attacks must stop at once.”

The Georgian authorities decided on 11 August to “combat disinformation” by cutting all access to Russian TV station broadcasts.

Georgia’s leading ISP, Caucasus Online, is filtering the Russian domain name “.ru” thereby blocking access to the main Russian-language news websites such as those of the Russian news agency Ria Novosti, the newspaper Izvestia and the Lenta.ru and Interfax (www.interfax.com) agencies. Russian hackers have meanwhile also attacked some regional news portals such as Day.az and ANS.az, two leading news websites based in Azerbaijan.

Many Georgian online news media are also blocked, such as Rustavi 2 (http://pr1.rustavi2.com/news/index.php), Civil.ge (http://www.civil.ge), Media.ge and Interpressnews.ge (http://www.interpressnews.ge/index.php?lang_id=ENG).

The Georgian government websites that have been attacked by Russian hackers include the president’s site (http://www.apsny.ge), which was inaccessible on 11 and 12 August. The foreign ministry website changed its URL address in order to remain accessible. It can now be reached at http://georgiamfa.blogspot.com/.

Four journalists and a driver have been killed and around 10 journalists have been injured since the outbreak of fighting between Georgia and Russia in South Ossetia.

A list of Georgian sites blocked by Russian hackers

More information about the press freedom situation in South Ossetia since 8 August

Background information about the press freedom situation in Georgia

Also in this section:
Editorial, Campaign censorship and strikes
Sirias, Daniel Ortega's predicament
Jackson, Does Bobby use the right hairspray to be mayor?
Obama, Social Security
McCain, Remarks to the Disabled American Veterans
Lutty, The American Dream
Human Rights Watch, Uribe's parapolitics maneuver
Bryant, Colombia and NATO
Reavey, Brazil's nuclear ambitions
Sweeney, The Bolivian recall election
Narula & Quiles, Venezuela and the United States
Reporters Without Borders, Website trashing in the South Ossetia conflict
Nasser, Jerusalem's "security vacuum"
Denis, Functional cooperation in the Greater Caribbean
Pilgrim, Melting ice and Caribbean waves
Leis, Education and dignified work
Bernal, Cops' human rights
Letters to the editor

Make the Executive Hotel your headquarters in Panama City --- http://ww.executivehotel-panama.com
Find the boat of your dreams through Evermarine --- http://www.evermarine.com

opinion