DoS Attacks on Estonia Were Launched by Student

As_I_Please alerts us to the fact that a 20-year-old Estonian student has been fined for participating in DoS attacks against various Estonian political and governmental websites last May. The situation was notable because it escalated tensions between Estonia and Russia when the latter was accused of initiating the 'cyber-attack'. Quoting: "The fact that a single student was able to trigger such events is particularly ominous when you consider just how many potential flashpoints exist between various countries all over the world. The DoS attack against Estonia is an excellent example of how a cyberattack carried out by a 20-year-old student in response to real-life events further exacerbated an existing problem between two nations."

Comments

In Soviet Estonia...

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers launch students... into space like great hero cosmonauts!

Much worse article at News.com

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I read this article at news.com earlier & am now a little bit stupider. Check out this line:

The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which some security experts have alternatively called a flash mob or the first-ever cyberwar,

WTF? A DDOS is a flash mob?

Re:Much worse article at News.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you explain that please with a car analogy?

Re:Much worse article at News.com

[ScrewMaster]

Sure ... when everybody on a crowded highway suddenly decide to get off at the same exit to go lynch somebody.

Re:Much worse article at News.com

[bladesjester]

I've always thought a flash mob would be interesting, but I would think the cops would be suspicious of a large group of people in trench coats suddenly starting to gather... :P

Re:Much worse article at News.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I read this article at news.com earlier & am now a little bit stupider.

Wow, you're right! Your grammar proves it!

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

it was found that the recent DoS attempt against arstechnica was launched by slashdot users everywhere

oh come on

[Anonymous Coward]

surely 'wargames' has been translated by now

Free kevin

Obligatory Soviet Russia Jokes Thread

[Gazzonyx]

I hereby declare a single thread dedicated to "In Soviet Russia..." jokes; we might as well keep them all together, as there's too much material for them in this story. I'll kick it off.

In Soviet Russia, you attack Estonia!

What do you guys got?

Re:Obligatory Soviet Russia Jokes Thread

[amirulbahr]

In Soviet Russia denial services you!

Re:There's another, I think

[the_cowgod]

There was another kid in the 80s who used an IMSAI 8080 to break into the WOPR over at NORAD... It almost caused a global thermonuclear war.

Re:There's another, I think

[Gazzonyx]

Fortunately, the only winning move was not to play (tic-tac-toe!), and it all ended well!

In Estonia, students hack you!

[freaker_TuC]

in Estonia, students hack you!

flash mob

[M. Baranczak]

Then, following a pre-agreed signal, they all simultaneously open their trench coats and show everybody a confusing web GUI full of rounded corners and running on top of a proprietary plug-in.

You know what would be funny?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should create a mockumentary where a couple of hackers destroy worldwide economy and bring about the end of civilized life. They should do so using only tools that any hacker would know to be completely inadequate to do the job. Use vim, show screenshots of obfuscated perl scripts (especially variants of "Hello, world!"), and explain the dangerous uses behind commands like `kill|killall`, `dos2unix` (= denial of service 2 US networks integrating x86), mogrify and crash (because they sound menacing), and of course `php` (preferred hacking protocol). Make the whole thing extremely serious, demand that governments do something to protect citizens against these vulnerabilities, and see how much chaos you can cause.