NAGORNO-KARABAKH DISPUTE TAKES TO CYBER SPACE
Rovshan Ismayilov and Onnik Krikorian

EurasiaNet, NY
Feb 8 2007

The differences between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed
territory of Nagorno-Karabakh may at times seem never-ending, but
in their response to what appears to be an ongoing cyber conflict
between Armenian and Azerbaijani hackers, residents of both countries
are standing united in a push for peace.

Clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani hackers are nothing new, but
the most recent "cyber war" has gained greater resonance. As was the
case in 2006, international observers have forecast that 2007 could
witness a breakthrough in negotiations between the two sides over
Nagorno-Karabakh. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

At the same time, the potential for online debates about the
territorial dispute is growing rapidly, as the number of Internet
users in both countries continues to expand.

The latest cyber conflict began on January 22 when Armenian hackers
attacked the website of Azerbaijan’s public television station. The
attackers, who identified themselves as members of Armenia’s security
services, posted Armenia’s state emblem on the site’s home page,
and warned that they would kill an Azerbaijani hacker identified as
"Bacioglu" (a slang Azeri word for "nephew"), if the individual did
not stop sabotaging Armenian websites.

But the threat did little to dissuade "Bacioglu." On January 29, the
Azerbaijani hacker attacked five Armenian websites (openarmenia.com,
openarmenia.ru, tamanyan.org, homeopathy.am, photoblogs.am). He posted
Azerbaijan’s state emblem and images of Azerbaijani civilians killed
in Nagorno-Karabakh on the sites’ home pages, along with a pledge to
"fight you and all Armenians on earth as long as I live" and a threat
to destroy the official website of Armenian President Robert Kocharian.

The hacker urged Azerbaijani TV channels to cover the news, warning
that "If they don’t, it could affect my enthusiasm."

On February 5, a group of Armenian hackers calling themselves "axteam"
attacked two more Azerbaijani sites — list.az and hayat.az — as
"revenge for Bacioglu," according to text posted on hayat.az.

The Armenian security service has rejected the claim that it is
connected with any of these attacks.

Meanwhile, few in either Armenia or Azerbaijan appear to support the
hackers, despite, in the case of Azerbaijan, an appeal by "Bacioglu"
for Azerbaijanis to back his "enthusiasm."

In comments to the independent ANS television channel on January 31,
Azerbaijani Communications and Information Technology Minister Ali
Abbasov urged both sides to stop the "electronic war."

"The electronic war which has started between Armenia and Azerbaijan
is something very unpleasant," Abbasov said. The minister suggested
that both countries should sign the European convention on cyber
crimes to avoid similar incidents in the future.

As in Armenia, Azerbaijani observers largely see the attacks as
time misspent. "There will not be a winner or a loser in this war,"
commented Ilgar Mammadov, an independent Baku-based political
analyst. "That is why I believe it is just wasting time."

Osman Gunduz, president of Multimedia, a Baku-based non-governmental
organization involved with projects promoting the Internet and
information technologies in Azerbaijan, shares this view. "In both
Azerbaijan and Armenia, the governments and security services have
nothing to do with it," said Gunduz. "These attacks are undertaken
by groups of young people who are expressing themselves this way and
showing their attitude toward the conflict between the countries."

Seven years have passed since tit-for-tat attacks by Azerbaijani and
Armenian hackers almost became an all-out "cyber war." In January
and February 2000, after an ethnic Armenian in California launched
Aliyev.com, a site that disseminated "black propaganda" about then
Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev, Azerbaijani hackers launched an
attack against Armenian Internet sites that included National State
Television H1, and several online resources about the Turkish massacre
of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians during World War I.

At the time, the Armenian foreign ministry called the attacks a
"violation of human rights," and a counter-offensive was launched by
a group of Armenian hackers, Liazor. The Russian-language Azerbaijani
daily Zerkalo (Mirror) reported that the group threatened to take down
the entire Azerbaijani Internet. Indeed, the websites of many large
Internet users, including humanitarian organizations, in Azerbaijan
were hacked, and the email connections of major Azerbaijani newspapers
disrupted.

Since then, the attacks on Armenian sites have continued. Before the
most recent run of hacking, in March 2006 Azerbaijani hackers broke
into the website of Armenia’s Eurovision Song Contest entry.

But Ruben Muradian, technical director of PanArmenian.Net, an online
news agency, says that any successful hacks from the outside are
because of careless system administrators or complacency among website
owners, not because of a concentrated cyber-war campaign.

"Any serious site should take care of its security," he said. "We
are in a situation of no-war and no-peace, and we have enemies. We
have to be prepared."

Official figures on Internet usage in both Armenia and Azerbaijan are
sketchy at best, but, as elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, user
numbers are believed to be increasing rapidly. A recent survey by the
International Telecommunication Union put the number of Azerbaijani
Internet users at 5.6 per 100 people, and the number of Armenian
users at slightly less, 5.03.

The Baku-based non-governmental organization Multimedia, which monitors
Internet usage, estimates that Azerbaijan now has some 700,000
Internet users — about 9 percent of the country’s population —
a figure that is nearly four times as high as in 2000, during the
last Armenian-Azerbaijani hacking conflict.

Despite the broader user base, the attack on Armenian sites, however,
did not mark the introduction of new, hi-tech techniques. After
accidentally opening an attachment in an email sent by an "Artur
Oganyan," all of the login details for the sites hosted on the same
US server were sent to the sender of the so-called "Trojan Horse,"
a document that contains a virus or spyware that can disseminate
a user’s password. A message stating that Nagorno-Karabakh was
"historical Azeri land" along with photographs of victims from the
Armenian attack on the Azerbaijani village of Khojali during the
Karabakh war replaced normal content.

As of February 8, the original content of all but one of the Armenian
sites was still unavailable online.

Samvel Martirosian, a local analyst and co-founder of Open Armenia,
an online forum that includes an area for discussion on the Karabakh
conflict between Armenian and Azerbaijani users, says that he is
convinced that this is not necessarily the start of new hostilities
on the Internet. As do other members of the Armenian IT community,
he strongly doubts that Armenians were responsible for the attack on
Azerbaijan’s public television site.

"The last real war was in 2000," Martirosian said. "Of course, small
attacks always come, and usually from Azeris. This time, I don’t know
for certain who attacked the sites in Azerbaijan, but I don’t think
he was an Armenian."

Martirosian points to the type of attacks experienced by Azerbaijani
sites in recent weeks and says that they are not the same as in
2000 when Liazor employed more sophisticated methods by modifying
site content. "If you destroy a website, all you succeed in doing is
taking it down for a few days and then publicizing its existence,"
he said. "That’s usually the work of some teenager living outside of
Armenia or Azerbaijan. Real hackers are more intelligent."

A report on the Azerbaijani news site Today.az that the Azerbaijani
public television website was compromised by the same method employed
against the five Armenian sites has fostered the belief in Armenia
that only one hacker is responsible.

Both PanArmenian.net’s Muradian and Martirosian second that view. "It
looks to me as though this is being done to provoke a war between
Armenian and Azerbaijani hackers," said Martirosian. "Thankfully,
one group of Azeri hackers has said it will not do anything now that
their Ministry of Communication has called for restraint, and there
is nothing to indicate the involvement of Armenians so far."

But domestic controversy surrounds one Azerbaijani government measure
to bring a halt to the hostilities. Communications and Information
Technology Minister Abbasov recently announced that all sites with
the ".az" domain, currently hosted in the United States, will soon be
relocated to Azerbaijan. "One of the reasons why Public TV’s website
was attacked so easily is that its server is located abroad, in the
US," Abbasov said, as quoted by Echo newspaper on January 31.

Some Azerbaijani Internet users see these plans as only providing the
government with greater control over digital media content. "It is
very difficult to attack our site, even theoretically," fumed Elnur
Baimov, editor-in-chief of Day.az, a popular Azerbaijani news site,
in a message posted on his site’s forum. "Who will provide us with
such security in Azerbaijan? Of course, nobody!"

"All Internet providers in Azerbaijan are under [the government’s]
control," Baimov continued. "I consider these plans a threat to freedom
of speech on the Internet." The government has not yet responded to
the charge. There are more than 3,000 websites currently registered
in Azerbaijan, according to data published on Day.az.

Other web users, however, believe the government should expand its
efforts to strengthen the security of Azerbaijani websites. "There is a
process of establishing ‘e-government’ in Azerbaijan," commented Rasim
Aliguliyev, director of the Information Technologies Institute of the
Azerbaijani National Academy of Sciences. "Therefore, the issue of
[the] security of web resources is becoming vital," Aliguliyev told
Trend news agency on January 22.

Many Armenians agree: "We cannot underestimate the role of the Internet
in our lives," commented one 22-year-old customer care professional
working for a leading foreign IT company based in Armenia. "[B]ut I
can’t see any serious person — even one concerned about the [Karabakh]
conflict — busying themselves with such childish ‘efforts.’ I would
say it’s all being done by [computer] nerds."

Editor’s Note: Rovshan Ismayilov is a freelance journalist based in
Baku. Onnik Krikorian is a freelance journalist and photographer from
the United Kingdom based in the Republic of Armenia. He works for a
variety of publications and international organizations.