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

[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

An exellent example... of what?

[gnud]

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?

Russia accused...

[unbug]

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?

Re:Russia accused...

[tehbunneh]

Maybe if you would knew a bit of that situation you wouldn't say that. Because the one who got caught was also an ethnic Russian. Born in Estonia to Russian parents. And he said he got the idea from various blogs and forum posts which called people to attack Estonian servers. These blogs and forums were in Russian servers. Besides the IP addresses showed the majority of the attacks to be from Russia. The guy in Estonia was just easier to arrest.

Not Acting Alone

[mandelbr0t]

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.

Re:Not Acting Alone

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I disagree. He wouldn't necessarily have to do anything to build a botnet himself, just have access to a C&C network built by someone else. He could gain access by renting the network, or even stumbling on an unprotected C&C server. There's a few out there, believe it or not. So yeah, other people may have created the botnet, but he still could have been acting alone when launching his attack.

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?

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!

Not the first time

[r_jensen11]

How was it that the United States got involved in Iraq, exactly?

Re:Not the first time

[ScentCone]

By Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait.

Say what you want. Thats where it all started.

I'm sorry, this is slashdot. Please keep the facts out it, would you? Next you're going to cite the fact that it was Bill Clinton's stated policy to see Saddam removed from power, too.

Re:Not the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to go that far back, just go back a little further when we got involved with entangling alliances in the region and meddling in the affairs of foreign governments. Had we not armed Saddam Hussein, for example, he might not have been strong enough to invade Kuwait. But we had to arm him, because the Shah of Iran, whom we propped up, got toppled by the Ayatollah who came to power by exploiting the dissatisfaction with the corruption of the US backed Shah, and we feared him spreading his power and influence.

People seldom dig deeper into events than is necessary to support their programmed partisan viewpoints.

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:Not the first time

[blirp]

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.

'Everybody'? I don't know what planet you where on back then, but most people in Europe didn't buy the theory of a link to Al-Qaeda. Most governments of Europe also wanted the weapons inspections to continue instead of invading.
Personally, I expected an invasion to become the quagmire the current Vice President of USA predicted. And I, along with a lot of people, expected it to only enrich certain oil companies. I even participated in a protest march for this.

M.

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.

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!

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.

Headline *very* misleading!

[minimum]

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.

Re:Headline *very* misleading!

[Max_W]

Ah yes. National-socialism. A son of an immigrant is not a true citizen. Only particular ethnicity is honored in the National State.

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.

What A Crock

[Jane Q. Public]

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.

Re:Speaking of Soviet Estonia

[emilper]

doesn't seem to have ever moved beyond plotting and assassinations have any proof ? I mean proof, not allegations.