August 15, 2008 War of the computers? Play video

(NECN: Brad Puffer, Boston, Mass.) - The cyber warfare between Russia and Georgia has spread to the United States. It is being tracked by a Massachusetts company.

As the tensions between Russia and Georgia increased and tanks rolled in, another war was also escalating -- in cyberspace.

Paul Morville is the vice president of Arbor Networks in Lexington, Massachusetts -- an Internet security company that tracks cyber attacks.

"They started out as some fairly small attacks and as the hostilities got bigger and bigger, we are now seeing some rather large attacks."

"While the attacks are probably being launched by Russia, we have no evidence to prove they are coming from the Russian government, themselves."

Those attacks helped take down government Web sites in Georgia, including that of the president, even replacing it with the image seen in this video clip.

Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman says the attacks work by flooding the Internet pipeline with excessive amounts of information.

Arbor Networks, which specializes in these types of defenses, says in just the past few years, the number of attacks have skyrocketed across the world.

Experts say the U.S. government has increased defenses of its own servers, but the problem affects both governments and major international companies -- a war where the only weapon is another computer.