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."
the Hainan Island incident
before 9/11 in early 2001, a chinese jet fighter bumped a us spy plane it was trying to harass away. the chinese fighter crashed and the pilot was never found, and the spy plane was forced to make an emergency landing on hainan island, where the chinese stripped the plane of equipment and then returned the crew to the usa
what happened for a few tense weeks was a lot of nationalistic chest thumping by chinese and american hackers: chinese hackers defacing poorly patched american servers, everything from small businesses to government systems, and american hackers defacing chinese servers: schools and government (i remember this well as i had a box that was hacked: my home page was replaced with a chinese flag and a "fuck usa", heh)
the point is, it's probably not official, it's probably by an independent group of weakly organized russian hackers upset due to nationalistic pride
the trigger for them is that statue that estonia got rid of in tallinn, which russians probably view as thousands of dead soldiers in the defense of estonia from the nazis, and estonia being ungrateful, and estonians viewing as an example of soviet domination, and a symbol of the past cold war era, and russians trying to retain their dominance
regardless, i expect some pissed off estonian hackers soon to plaster "in soviet russia, estonia hackers hack you!" all over pravda.ru, or something
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You haven't got a clue.
A DDOS attack is basically an attempt to saturate the capacity of the target. The "distributed" part means that it is difficult to screen out the attackers because the machines are on so many different subnets. The flaws that a DDOS relies on are not in the attacked systems, but in the attacking ones which have been compromised and have had software installed that makes them a "bot". A network of these "bots" are then coordinated by the attacker.
And if you think that shutting down the websites of pretty much every government institution, bank and commercial enterprise in a highly connected country like Estonia amounts to "a few eggs thrown over the fence" then just think what it would do your nations economy.
The world does not evolve around America kiddy wink!
The politics section originally started out I believe a year or two ago to cover the election and resulting aftermath of "ZOMG BUSH GOT LESS VOTES!" type story. It has since become a more rounded section and carries stories from all over the world under it's banner, because you know "Stuff that matters" is quite often political.
I mean when people start having wars via the Internet (as this rather implies is happening in some twisted form) it starts to effect us geeks as well. So we discuss it on Slashdot and because it's political based they used the politics banner.
I feel sorry for you if you can't see that the FAQ maybe outdated and this has been this way for a good few months (maybe 12+) now, so decide to grind your axe on a stone that's been here longer than you probably have (Anoncow has no ID so I can't tell from your number, but I have to assume you're new if you don't understand the politics section).
I like muppets.
The summary doesn't mention that the attacks started after Estonia began excavating graves of Soviet troops killed during the World War II and vandalized the memorial devoted to them. Estonia is seen as a neo-fascist regime by Russia, and in my opinion, rightly so: you can't deny over 30% of your population [estimate of Russian population in Estonia] the most basic rights, including citizenship and education for children, based on their nationality, and be seen otherwise. Of course, Europe and the United States ignore this issue.
Let me give you another perspective on this. You can decide whether or not you want to stick to your guns here. Are you by any chance married to a Russian woman? Because if you are, that will certainly inhibit your ability to see the other side.
Estonia was under Russian control until 1918. It remained an independent nation until 1940, when the USSR invaded it. Germany occupied it from 1941 to 1944. During the 1 year or so of Soviet occupation prior to the Nazi invation, the Soviets did such nice things as kill the intellectuals and forcibly conscript Estonians into the Red Army. I can't say it's any wonder that as in Ukraine (where Stalin and his henchmen had killed and starved to death millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s), the locals viewed the Nazis as liberators and then found out that they were just as bad if not worse as the Soviets. Do note that the USA never recognized the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. NEVER. It's important to know that for over 50 years, official US policy was that the occupation of these 3 countries was illegal.
After WWII ended, Estonia was screwed. They were part of the Soviet Union. The Soviets moved hundreds of thousands of Russian speaking immigrants into Estonia in an attempt to "Russify" it and to dilute Estonian nationalism. Estonian freedom fighters fought a small scale guerilla war against the USSR into the early 1950s when they finally gave up and realized it was hopeless.
During the USSR period, Russian was the official language in education. It was possible to have education in whatever the local language was (Krushchev made some changes that allowed this), but there was a catch - if you wanted to get a good job, you absolutely had to speak Russian well. Given that Russian and Estonian are about as closely related as English is to Polish, you might understand that Estonian parents had no choice but to send their kids to Russian language schools so as to give them the best chance to prosper in the USSR.
Cut to 1991 when Estonia gets its independence. They now have a rather large Russian speaking population who they were forced to accept by a government that no longer exist. These people have never assimilated into Estonian society. In fact, they were encouraged immigrate there specifically to dilute Estonia's sense of national identity and to turn them into "good little Soviet subjects". These immigrants have never bothered to learn the Estonian language since Russian was the official language of the government prior to 1991. Now you have all these people who say "Screw you! We want to speak Russian!" in a country where the majority of citizens speak the local language, Estonian. They demand that everything be done in Russian so they can understand it. The Estonians never wanted to speak Russian to begin with, so they are promoting the use of their national language. Now you have about 26% of the population who refuses to "get with the program", demands that their language be given equal footing with the national tongue and even worse, feels that things were a lot better back when they were in charge and the stupid locals were taking orders from them. So given that Estonia never wanted the Soviets/Russians there to begin with and the Soviets weren't exactly enlightened when they ran the show, can you really blame them for not being real happy with Russia today? By the way, ethnic Russians can become Estonian citizens, but they have to take