[126058] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: [only half OT] A socio-psychological analysis of the first
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Smith)
Thu Apr 29 11:05:44 2010
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:04:36 -0400
In-Reply-To: <4BD90221.5010800@linuxbox.org>
From: "Michael Smith" <msmith@internap.com>
To: "NANOG list" <nanog@nanog.org>
X-CRXEFW-From: msmith@internap.com
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
No GPL for the full paper, huh? Back to the cathedral.... =20
What's the toll in case I can get some buddies to pitch-in to buy access
to the full content?
-----Original Message-----
From: Gadi Evron [mailto:ge@linuxbox.org]=20
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=20
"live mobs", or an "online riot" if you like, where individuals simply=20
sent pings toward Estonian addresses. While it doesn't seem like pings=20
would cause so much damage -- en masse they certainly did. Then of=20
course, there is also the psychological aspect...
... When everyone and their grandmother attacked with pings, spammers,=20
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=20
could happen again (regardless of if any actor is behind it).
The psychological aspect of this is indeed off-topic to NANOG, but the=20
attack is analogous to network peak usages with user interest in=20
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=20
on the internet, and how it can also be abused.
I hope some here would find the research useful for their own interest,=20
if nothing else. Otherwise, sorry for wasting your bandwidth and thanks=20
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=20
off-list, though.
Gadi.
--=20
Gadi Evron,
ge@linuxbox.org.
Blog: http://gevron.livejournal.com/
