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.