Russia accused of cyber warfare

Georgia has accused Russia of engaging in a parallel cyber war during the recent offensive in the central Asian country.

Georgia said that key government websites had been hacked, leading them to be blocked to visitors.

The Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was one of the first websites to be taken out by hackers using so-called 'denial of service' attacks, where by websites are bombarded with millions of hits causing them to falter and crash.

Georgia has pointed the finger of blame at Russia. It was forced to set up a temporary foreign affairs website on the Google-owned Blogger service.

However, the extent of the attack is unclear as web companies monitoring Georgia's internet infrastructure reported some "low-level vandalism" on Georgian websites, but said there was no evidence of "widescale, state-sanctioned, electronic warfare".

Both Georgia and Russia have ordered an end to military operations which exploded into full-scale warfare over two de facto independent regions located inside Georgia.

Meanwhile Estonia, which suffered at the hands of Russian hackers last year, is to send a team of cyber-defence analysts to Georgia.