OTTAWA -- As Russian troops stormed into Georgia this month, they had some novel help from cyber-savvy countrymen who unleashed an assault of their own -- hacking into government and commercial websites.
NATO calls it iWar, and it has the potential to disrupt lives and wreck economies, particularly in Internet-dependent countries like Canada.
The Russian hackers were spectacularly successful to the point that some experts are now predicting that Internet-based attacks could be just as innovative to warfare as the advent of gunpowder.
"It's very easy to cause a lot of trouble using three guys and a laptop," said James Appathurai, a spokesman for NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
NATO foreign ministers, including Canada's David Emerson, meet in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss the fighting in Georgia and possible punishment for Moscow, which claims to have begun a withdrawal.
Russia denies its military was behind last week's three-stage cyber attacks, claiming that "patriotic" civilian hackers were simply joining the fray unprompted in taking down Georgian websites.
-- The Canadian Press
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