Nagorno-Karabakh Dispute Takes to Cyber Space

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