[only half OT] A socio-psychological analysis of the first internetwar (Estonia)

Fri Apr 30 12:43:17 UTC 2010

On 4/29/10 6:04 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
> No GPL for the full paper, huh?  Back to the cathedral....
>
> What's the toll in case I can get some buddies to pitch-in to buy access
> to the full content?

I don't really expect people to pay for it. I hope it will eventually 
become freely available.

	Gadi.

>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gadi Evron [mailto:ge at linuxbox.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 11:51 PM
> To: NANOG
> Subject: [only half OT] A socio-psychological analysis of the first
> internetwar (Estonia)
>
> Hi,
>
> In the past year I have been working in collaboration with psychologists
>
> Robert Cialdini and Rosanna Guadagno on a paper analyzing some of what I
>
> saw from the social perspective in Estonia, when I wrote the post-mortem
>
> analysis for the 2007 attacks, but didn't understand at the time.
>
> Aside to botnets and and flood-based attacks, many of the attacks were
> "live mobs", or an "online riot" if you like, where individuals simply
> sent pings toward Estonian addresses. While it doesn't seem like pings
> would cause so much damage -- en masse they certainly did. Then of
> course, there is also the psychological aspect...
>
> ... When everyone and their grandmother attacked with pings, spammers,
> professionals and others who know what they are doing then got involved,
>
> attacking using more sophisticated tools.
>
> We analyze how the Russian-speaking population online was manipulated to
>
> attack Estonia (and Georgia) in the "cyber war" incidents, and how it
> could happen again (regardless of if any actor is behind it).
>
> The psychological aspect of this is indeed off-topic to NANOG, but the
> attack is analogous to network peak usages with user interest in
> high-bandwidth content, and how large networks prepare for such peaks.
>
> This is about the DDoS attacks, and how a human DDoS has been and can be
>
> initiated again. It also under-scores the power of individual activism
> on the internet, and how it can also be abused.
>
> I hope some here would find the research useful for their own interest,
> if nothing else. Otherwise, sorry for wasting your bandwidth and thanks
> for your time.
>
> Article on El Reg:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/28/web_war_one_anonymity/
>
> Paper (for download with pay :( ):
> http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2009.0134
>
> Thanks, and any comments appreciated. If on psychology, please do it
> off-list, though.
>
> 	Gadi.
>

-- 
Gadi Evron,
ge at linuxbox.org.

Blog: http://gevron.livejournal.com/