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01.10.2012

HACKER ATTACKS AGAINST ARMENIAN SEGMENT OF THE WEB: RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

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Samvel Martirosyan
Expert, Center for Information Studies, “Noravank” Foundation

The Azerbaijani and Turkish hacker groups continue to constitute menace to the Armenian segment of the Internet. Hackers regularly arrange attacks on Armenian web sites. Emails and social network profiles of the individuals are also being hacked.

From 50 to 100 Armenian web sites fall victims of the Azerbaijani and Turkish hacker groups monthly. But sometimes it happens that hackers manage to capture servers on which many sites are hosted. Thus, on July 1 at once 86 web sites were attacked1.

The statistics of the attacks shows that the main activity of the hackers is rather predictable.

Azerbaijani hacker groups have several main days for the attacks:

  • January 20 – on this day Azerbaijan celebrates bringing of the Soviet troops into Baku (immediately after the Armenian pogroms on January 13-19), as a result many pogrom-makers and peaceful civilians were killed2.
  • Late February – in connection with the events in Khojalu3
  • March 31 – on the day of the so-called Azerbaijani genocide.

Besides, the attempts are made on the national holidays of Armenia. They also attack at the end of December and on the first days of January, as well as in August. This is conditioned by the fact that on these days control over the sites is weakened sharply due to the holidays and vacations.

The Turkish hackers mainly attack in the period of April 24. They also activate during the discussions of the Armenian Genocide on a state level in different countries.

Though quite rarely but combined actions by Turkish and Azerbaijani hacker groups are also implemented. The Azerbaijani and Turkish hacker groups often deface web sites of the third countries and place there anti-Armenian content. Thus on March 31 Azerbaijani hackers defaced several hundred web sites in different countries but in the Azerbaijani press it was presented as a successful attack against the Armenian web sites. However, the list of the defaced web sites presented by the hackers comes to prove that most of them are not Armenian and the Armenian web sites presented there were attacked previously4.

There are following main types of the successful attacks5:

  • SQL Injection6 - 87%.
  • Wrong usage of additional software used at the web-sites – about 11%.
  • Key exhaustion – about 2%.

The fact that most of the attacks against the individuals were registered in 2012 causes concern. There were three cases when Turkish and Azerbaijani hackers placed on the web more than 400 Armenian email addresses with their passwords7. And several mailboxes belonged to the journalists. It is difficult even to imagine the amount of the possible information leakage over that period, because there could have been correspondence of people who hold a prominent place in the society.

Statistics of the Armenian web sites defacement:

Diagram 1
Hacker attacks against the Armenian segment of the Internet in 2011, according to Cybergates.



Diagram 2
Hacker attacks against the Armenian segment of the Internet in 2012, according to Cybergates.


1 http://www.tert.am/am/news/2012/07/02/hackers/

2 http://baku.am/top-content-3

3 http://xocali.net/

4 List of posted by the hackers on their Facebook page. https://www.evernote.com/shard/s8/sh/35a11b49-eb6b-4cfc-9b2f-ce4ef2ace674/fa90a39b106975b285c30d49d46038ec

5 According to the data presented by the vice-chairman of “Internet Society” Grigor Saghyan for 2011-2012.

6 http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5_SQL-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0

7 Lists of the mailboxes attacked:
http://kornelij.livejournal.com/1226184.html
http://kornelij.livejournal.com/1234116.html
http://kornelij.livejournal.com/1236276.html

“Globus” analytical journal, #9, 2012

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