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

The War on Cyber-Warfare

[T-Bone_142]

Is it just me or have there been a lot of stories about "cyber wars", "cyber-attack"... lately (especially on slashdot). Is this going to become the next big thing, "The War on Cyber-Warfare" with new laws contently coming in place to help protect everyone from evil "hacker" teenagers bent on destroying the world, which no doubt will take away even more of the dwindling freedoms the american people still have left?

There's another, I think

[Gazzonyx]

What about that guy back in the 80s who got half an inch away from the Pentagon?

He was using a TR(A)S(H)-80 from Radio Shack, IIRC. Probably a 1200 baud modem (not even Hayes compatible!), 64K of RAM and a CLI... He was probably a Real Programmer. Sadly I was born in '84, so I don't really remember it happening.

Probably not.

[jd]

Before that, the USA was arming Iraq to fight Iran. Some time prior to that, Iraq went through numerous coups, a British invasion, two monarchies and a partridge in a pear tree. Prior to the pear tree, Iraq was owned by the British. Actually, two distinct regions (Basra and Baghdad) were owned by the British. To save on ink, when drawing maps, they called the group "Iraq". Before that was the Ottoman Empire, who - ultimately - can be blamed quite reasonably for most of the current blood-feuds in Europe and the Middle East. Before that were the Mongols, who can be blamed for just about everything else. Before that, the Islamic forces of Khalid ibn al-Walid decimated the area and took it out of Persian control, who in turn invaded before they even became Persians. Nothing like getting ahead of themselves! Some time before that, Alexander the Great made a royal mess of the area. Before that, there were endless wars between the Assyrians, the Akkadians, the Sumerians (who were largely obliterated), assorted other nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes, and whatever culture lived there first of which there is almost no trace left.

In other words, there is no meaningful "first", unless you want to go back around 10,000 years. Almost everything that happened after that point was in direct retribution to what had happened before. That's one reason it will take a lot of effort to calm the region down - ten thousand years is a long time to build up grdudges and resentments -- and don't think a single one of them has been forgotten.

Getting back to the main topic, just as an aside, this is why societies can't survive for very long on a diet of paranoia, fear and resentment. Sooner or later, you'll get people who hate each other less than they hate some imagined collective enemy, and the shit will hit the fan at a speed approaching mach 2. I'm surprised that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often - students get an even rawer deal than most, even at the best of times, naturally form into groups, and generally have significant combined intellect and skills. This is probably the worst group to infuriate and should really be the first group to focus on getting support from.

Re:Not the first time

[ptbarnett]

Next you're going to cite the fact that it was Bill Clinton's stated policy to see Saddam removed from power, too.

Along with just about everyone else on both sides of the political aisle.

I've noticed that now there's a "study" about all the lies that the Bush administration told about Iraq, back when almost everyone else was apparently telling the same lies, or at least believing them.

There's an excerpt on Yahoo News of an interesting interview from "60 Minutes", with the guy that interrogated Saddam after he was captured. According to this interrogator, Saddam said he didn't believe that Bush would actually order the invasion -- he thought that there would be a few days of air strikes, and it would be over. Saddam survived it when Clinton tried that, and Saddam thought he could survive it again. And he admitted that's why he continued to let everyone believe that he had various weapons of mass destruction.

I always wondered why Saddam behaved like he had something to hide, when he really didn't. I guess he thought the WMD threat would discourage his enemies -- which included most of the Middle East, various Western democracies, and a large percentage of the people in his OWN country.

Re:Russia accused...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an Estonian living in Tallinn so take this as you want.

Although there is no proof that it was a Kremlin sanctioned attack (see: Politkovskaya) there is little doubt here that it was. But the thing is that when we say it was the Russians who did it, we don't always mean the Kremlin. What we mean is the Russian people, the people who are a bit crazy in their interpretation of history saying that Estonia was "liberated" by the Russians and other nonsense. These are the people who rioted in April. These are the people who think Estonia should still be part of Russia and hate the idea of an independent Baltic State. These people are Russians. They are the Russians that conducted the cyber attacks and although a IP trace will not be able to distinguish a users nationality, are you seriously going to believe they where not Russians?

disclaimer: I don't hate Russians, just these people. In Estonia, we call them "tiblad". I love my Russian girlfriend and have a good time hanging out with my Russian friends.

Re:Russia accused...

[tehbunneh]

Maybe I could explain this with a Mass Effect analogy. Let's imagine that the Russian media is the Fox Network. Like the Fox Network it has its target demographic which in this case are the Russians, but in Estonia the ethnic Russians follow the Russian media to and almost (i said almost) exclusively. So when someone in Russian media makes a false statement (like the one made by the Fox Network against Mass Effect) the ethnic Russians are more likely to listen to that information. For instance, the protesting began because someone made a claim that Estonian authorities are trying to move the statue without proper ceremonies and they are doing it right now, which was completely false(the decision to move the statue quickly came later when the riots had already started). Now when the Russian media claims that this was the plan all along Russian people who felt that their national pride had been insulted took action, which didn't require any interference from the secret service or Kreml (but it doesn't rule their involvement out, especially in publishing the false information in the first place).

The idea was to distribute enough FUD for people to act, which was like the with the Mass Effect discussion. Even though this was for different reasons, and it is likely that the Fox Network made the false claims unknowingly and for the sake of having a news article.

If you still think that I need my tinfoil hat, then please tell me so.

Yes, I know, this analogy needs more cars.

Re:The guy is Russian

[emilper]

Last time I checked, which was during the early '90s, getting Estonian citizenship depended on passing some sort of language test, and that despite the fact that there are Russians on the territory currently controlled by Estonia ever since the Swedes lost it to Russia 200 years ago.

"this 'proving they're loyal' crap" is exactly what is happening now: you raise up some hell, then have your subjects choose sides. There is no other way anybody can "prove" loyalty to anything. Unfortunately for the Estonians that speak Russian at home even if their family lived in what is now Estonia for 12 generations, and for those whose families lived there only for four generations, too, there is no human being on God's Earth that has only one set of loyalties, and by messing up with the monument for the army that pretty much prevented them from being exterminated as "untermensch" the Estonian government demands of them to renounce a part of their identity and choose sides. Only somebody who does not understand at all, or somebody who understands it perfectly, what did the WWII mean for any Russian (Veliko-, Malo- or Bielo-, or living in any other part of the Europe that was occupied by the Nazi), would mess with a symbol of their survival.

The Estonian government it very lucky indeed not to have faced French-style rioting and mass migration of Russians out of Estonia: that would shoot down the "Baltic tiger" sooner than the currency pegged to the Euro or the export oriented economy would. Right now, I guess Russia would be extremely grateful for an influx of skilled laborers that already speak Russian and have legitimate reasons to have a grudge against their previous homeland.