Cyberwar Chronicles: Another Hack-Attack on Armenian Websites

Uzogh reports, that that there has been another hack attack by Azerbaijani hackers on a number of Armenian Websites hosted on the Web.am server. Web ISP is one of the largest Internet Service Providers in Armenia. I have always been quite skeptical about the quality of web-hosting services the company provides, however, today my skepticism turned into open rage when I discovered, that the Echannel blog, which I am administering, was also among the websites affected by this new hack. Further updates from Kornelij Glas and Uzogh tell us, that the Web ISP have closed the holes on their servers exploited by hackers/script kiddies initiating the attack, who according to Uzogh hang out at the SecurityLab.az forum. This is not the first such attack this year, in fact, both Kornelij Glas and Uzogh, as well as Oneworld Multimedia have covered earlier attacks against Armenian websites. It seems more like a Cyberwar, then anything else, although this year it has mostly been one-sided, pushed by the Azerbaijani hackers. The way attacks have been conducted so far speak more about poor Internet Security practices on the Armenian side, then of any special hacking skills of the attackers. Moreover, from what I know of the Azerbaijani websites, paying them back with the same coin should not be very difficult. This however, leads to an important question – which is the best, most reasonable response to these attacks? And what could be done to end them. As Uzogh rightly noted during our phone conversation, there is no point in going after and hacking the website of say Zerkalo newspaper in Azerbaijan. That won’t do the attackers of the Armenian websites any harm, and will instead escalate the situation even further and cause some decent, hard working IT manager sweat for hours to try and fix the problems and errors. But then, we can’t just sit back and do nothing, can we?
PS: Here’s the list of webpages known to be affected by this attack (the crossed over links have been already fixed):

http://banks.am/eng/efeler.htm
http://auto.am/ceasar/images/editorial/a.php
http://elections2007.am/ru/efeler.html
http://levonabrahamian.am/engine/pics/efeler.html
http://armilmed.am/img/work/efeler.html
http://xorenaci.am/chat/uploaddir/efeler.htm (DNS не отвечает)
http://ayl.am/upload/image/efeler.htm
http://arenicountry.am/arm/images/efeler.htm
http://vaykgroup.am/ru/efeler.htm
http://www.izoton.am/images/ins/efeler.htm
http://artbymovses.com/prog/gallery/1/efeler.htm
http://atp.am/img/part/efeler.htm
http://phoneshop.am/warez/efeler.htm
http://noy1877.am/images/efeler.htm
http://araratcement.am/xmbagrelcement/model_admin/model_images/efeler.htm
http://echannel.am/blogs/wp-content/uploads/efeler.htm
http://chessacademy.am/Temp/efeler.htm
http://acsti.am/book/images/efeler.htm