Slashdot Mirror
Russia Accused of Cyber-War Against Estonia
earthlingpink writes about the ongoing DDoSing of Estonia. The Guardian is reporting that Russia stands accused of engaging in a three-week-long series of cyber-attacks. Government, banking, and media websites have been targeted. It is unclear whether the attacks are sanctioned or initiated by the Russian Government, but Estonian authorities believe that to be the case. NATO has sent security experts to Tallinn to help beef up defenses. The Estonian defense minister said, "At present, NATO does not define cyber-attacks as a clear military action. This means that the provisions of... collective self-defense, will not automatically be extended to the attacked country... this matter needs to be resolved in the near future."
"Or are you suggesting that Estonian sysadmins perform the impossible and patch all these lousy Windows boxes on various ISP accounts around the world?"
As a matter of fact, yes, I am suggesting that. More or less, I would either like everyone in the world to patch the systems OR see MS take responsibility for the giant macro-economic mess they've created. I shouldn't have to suffer whatever problems the US has in store becasue Gates & Co. can't get their act together.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
In your universe, two wrongs apparently make a right. Hitler + Stalin = Jesus.
I think a lot of people here are making a lot of judgements based on a very narrow and incomplete knowledge of the problem. Why would Estonia make the decision to remove the monument to the Soviet unknown soldier? After all, the Soviet army liberated Estonia from Nazi Germany in 1942. But it's an uncomfortable truth for Estonians that they collaborated very readily with their Nazi occupiers, and contributed to the many crimes perpetrated against Jews, Russians and other Slavs, etc. So the Russian minority (a sizable minority - on the order of 1/3 of the population of Estonia is Russian), feeling already discriminated against on a linguistic basis, is additionally frustrated by the Estonian political elite's attempt to rewrite history, treating the Soviet occupation as an enslavement, and the Nazi one as something akin to a liberation. Furthermore, there is simply no evidence that this response is orchestrated by the Russian government. In fact, they have much more effective and painful measures of retribution (such as shutting off the gas valves), which makes one wonder why they would bother with something so petty as DDoS. This is much more likely a spontaneous reaction by Russian hackers sympathising with their Estonian compatriots, but more to the point, it's an illustrative example of what kind of reactions are produced when you deny a minority the means to determine their lives through democratic processes. A useful example in how sometimes, the little guy is not necessarily the good guy.