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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."
Computers launch students... into space like great hero cosmonauts!
WTF? A DDOS is a flash mob?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
it was found that the recent DoS attempt against arstechnica was launched by slashdot users everywhere
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.
Eh. How about the _only_ example?
So on what basis did Estonia accuse Russia of staging those attacks? This story was picked up all over the world and nobody bothered to check if they actually had anything resembling a proof?
While they may not have found evidence of any other people involved, it's unlikely that a single person could establish a botnet large enough to overwhelm anything on his own. The only answer I can think of is education - botnets exist because the owners of the zombie PCs simply don't recognize that it's a zombie. There is certainly an overall lack of regulation, too. As a domain owner, I see lots of abusive traffic and have absolutely no legal recourse to punish a perpetrator. Responsible network owners often help, but there's so few networks that are responsible that I usually assume they're not, forcing me to do what little I can at my own site to prevent further abuse.
For the student's part, he was only fined (I couldn't find how much in TFA). Not much deterrent to prevent him from doing it again. No leverage to find out who he was working with. The lack of clear laws in any country makes prosecution of such actions impossible. As a domain owner, I'd like to see civilized countries show some direction toward making prosecution of such activities a reality. Until then, it's "you hack me, I hack you" which is completely counterproductive.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
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?
"In Soviet America, Passport Stamps You!"
In Soviet Russia, you attack Estonia!
What do you guys got?
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
How was it that the United States got involved in Iraq, exactly?
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.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
in Estonia, students hack you!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
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.
Only one kid DDOS'ed goverment and news sites and created that mayhem? Right. So nobody bothers to mention that the student who was arrested had a Russian name - Dmitri Galushkevich ? Sure he may have the citizenship but he's not really Estonian. Just offspring of an immigrant. And he wasn't the only kid around here who helped to DDOS.
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.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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.
Just as I said when original discussion happened, Russian government was not responsible. Now, is Pentagon still ready to bomb cyberattackers? If yes, then next student with a grudge will finish off a country or two before we have a chance of intelligent machines or human-made bacteria to kill us all.
Hyperom.com
Quote: "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..."
What nonsense. If governments put important messages on such "secure" places as roadside billboards, for example, then they should expect "hacks" like moustaches drawn on them, etc.
Others are not to blame if the government is clueless. The fact that it was so easy to do is a great indication that the government was in fact clueless. If they want to put something important somewhere and keep it "secure", then they are responsible for taking at least minimal measures to make sure that it is, in fact, secure.
They are just looking for someone to blame for their own incompetence.
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.
During WW2, Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union under the Molotov-Ribbintrop pact, which carved up eastern Europe between Stalin and Hitler. Hitler later reneged, and invaded the area assigned to Stalin, taking over the Baltic States (Estonia, Lativa and Lithuania). The Russians later retook Eastern Europe, and re-occupied the Baltics. They didn't leave until the early 90s. Many Russians resettled in Estonia during the occupation, mostly taking lower level jobs - the standard of living has always been better there than in Russia. They now form about 1/3 of the population.
In central Tallinn (the capital of Estonia) the Soviets set up a war memorial to the Soviet 'liberators' who died driving out the Nazis. To the Estonians, however, the 'Bronze Soldier' just commemorated a second occupation - one that went on for nearly 50 years. In 2007 the now-independent Estonian government decided to move the statue to a Soviet military cemetary in the edge of town. The ethnic Russian Estonians objected, as did Russia, and Putin personally called it a desecration. There were riots, and even one death in Tallinn.
The statue was moved, and it was at this point that the cyberattack was launched.
The kid accused is a Russian Estonian. It remains unclear who ordered the attack - Putin's gang could easily have provoked otherwise uninvolved hackers in the Russian diaspora to act.
The attack certainly served Russia's interests at the time, punishing a tiny, resented upstart for daring to act with sovereignty. That there is plausible deniability doesnt clear Putin and his ex-KGB cronies.