The group's report put it somewhat differently. "We assess with high confidence that the Russian government will likely continue its practice of distancing itself from the Russian nationalistic hacker community, thus gaining deniability while passively supporting and enjoying the strategic benefits of their actions," the report stated.

That conclusion was similar to one reached by other security researchers in August. At the time, Kimberly Zenz, a senior threat analyst at VeriSign's iDefense Labs, said that the Russian government views hackers as a "national asset" that can be put into play during any shooting war or political crisis of its choosing.

Project Grey Goose also spelled out how it believed the Russian hackers were able to knock offline so many Georgian servers so quickly. Rather than launch a traditional distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack with a large-scale botnet, the hackers used SQL injection and Blind SQL injection attacks that exploited vulnerabilities in the MySQL databases many servers rely on for their back-end databases. The advantage: Because such exploits stress the servers' processors, the hackers were able bring down their targets using a small number of attacking machines.

Carr confirmed that the attack technique was more than just unusual. "It is unique. It also demonstrates an adaptive process and shows that nationalist hackers are aggressively improving their types of attacks," he said. Security researcher Billy Rios was instrumental in uncovering the attack tactics, Carr added.

The fact that the hackers used such exploits, the group concluded, was another clue that preparations may have begun long before the two countries' military forces engaged. "It shows planning, organization, targeted reconnaissance and evolution of attacks," the report stated.

Next on the group's agenda, said Carr Friday, is a more in-depth investigation into Russian hacking groups and their involvement in cyberwarfare. He declined to get more specific, however.

"Our belief was that if you got a group of intelligent people together and involved and turned them loose -- with no crap -- and trusted in their knowledge and motivation, then what would the end result look like?" Carr said. "Why not try it?"

Project Grey Goose's report can be viewed on several sites, including Scribd.com.