Cyber warfare is going hand in hand with the Russian attack of Georgia according to the Moscow Times

Hackers knocked down Georgian government web sites days before Russian tanks rolled into the country's territory, in what experts said Wednesday was an ominous sign that cyber-attacks might foreshadow future armed conflicts.

Major Internet security firms reported massive attacks on Georgian web sites by hackers using botnets, a network of "zombie" computers that can be used to overwhelm servers with millions of unsolicited requests.

"Cyber-attacks are part of the information war," said Alexander Denezhkin, editor of Cybersecurity.ru, an online journal. "Making your enemy shut up is a potent weapon of modern warfare."

The so-called distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks began in the weeks running up to the outbreak of the Russia-Georgia conflict and continued
after the Kremlin announced that it had ceased hostilities Tuesday, said Tom Burling, an executive of Tulip Systems, a U.S. Internet firm. Tulip Systems, which took over hosting of the web sites for Georgia's presidency and a major television network on Saturday, said its experts had worked frantically to curtail the damage from the hackers.

"They have been attacking Georgia from a cyber standpoint since July," Burling said, AFP reported. "They are still doing it now. Our poor technician here has gotten three hours sleep in the past four days."

Georgia has blamed Russia for the attacks.

Burling said Russia could be behind the attacks, which mirror attacks on Estonian web sites amid a dispute between Moscow and Tallinn last year.

Access to the Georgian president's web site remain closed Wednesday, and attempts to reach government officials by telephone for comment were unsuccessful.

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