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Estonian Cyber Defence Hub Set Up
w1z4rd writes "The BBC reports that seven Nato nations have backed a new cyber defence centre in Estonia, which last year blamed Russia for weeks of attacks on its internet structure. The US will initially send an observer to the project, which will have some 30 staff when fully operational in August."
Did anyone else read that as "Elbonia" when they first read it? I was picturing an ungodly amalgamation of mud, wooden slingshots, 286s, and farm animals...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Cyber Defence sounds so much more cooler than it actually is...
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
Somebody set up us the hub!
hackers of the world unite! you have nothing to lose but your DRM.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the purple monkey dishwasher
Doesn't sound at all like another attempt by NATO to encroach upon what Russia considers her former sphere of influence. Not at all.
It's not like I'm some sort of advocate of Russian politics, but someone inside NATO must have a clue about these things and does them deliberately.
Weird.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I first read the title expecting to see some kind of uber-social-engineering against an existing defense hub. I'd wonder if the ambiguous use of "set up" was actually intentional, but yes, I'm familiar with Hanlon's Razor.
Ah, here it is! Let's see... Area: 17,413 sq mi, Population: 1,340,602. Huh, well you don't *need* a gov't/military power to DDoS that country. The state of Oregon has more servers and IT personnel than the country of Estonia. I'm guessing their websites cater mostly to Estonians which basically means they consistently failed to take scaling into account. Estonia doesn't need a Cyber Defence Hub. Just a bit of common sense.
I think this is evidence of a trend towards international organizations to create divisions or authorities responsible for cyber governance/monitoring/standardization/accountability.
I am keeping my eyes peeled for a new division/center in the UN for cyberspace soon.
Borat: My computer, it is dead!
Victim: That's terrible!
Borat: No, is OK. My friend Igor give me 386 for massage with, how you say, happy finish.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't those attacks eventually turn out to have nothing at all to do with Russia, being instead the work of a single person?
Funny how no-one thought to mention this before diverting large sums of money to setting up the centre.
And it's shameful that the BBC can't be bothered to do basic fact-checking any more.
Being an Estonian I can say that the so called attacks weren't really such a big deal. Basically a few government web pages (parliament's, government's president's and couple more) were DDOS'ed for a couple of hours from Russian ips. It's not like this caused too much trouble (the government's infranet still worked just fine, the citizens just couldn't access the pages). I do think that the idea of Cyber Defence is quite cool and I'm glad, that we're the pioneers here but it does seem that this really is the primary reason here, to pioneer something. It might still become useful one day and I'll be interested to see how this rolls out. I do enjoy the fact that the small size of Estonia allows us to try all the new IT solutions on quite a large scale very fast. So far we've done quite well and I hope that we can do something revolutionary on the international scale as well. The IT innovation part of Estonia is really something I'm proud of.
They'll never defend anything with a hub. At the very least they should get a router. ~
Estonians should get real and find the ways to cooperate with Russia, not to pretend that Russia does not exist. You just can't deliberately ignore a 100 mln people living next to you, not to mention enraging them. You should account for their feelings when making political decisions.
And that does not mean that Estonia should give up its sovereignty. You just cannot be totally independent from your neighbours. Estonia is no island.
Coding etudes
AFAIK DDoS is more quality of service and ISP issue... Is it going to be training center where ISPs can send their employees to take IPv4, "packet filtering" and "upstream traffic tracking" courses? Or they will hack ISPs routers, track streams themselves and will nuke "areas of origin in a question" from the orbit?
Why is it that whenever I read about nationwide, concerted, coordinated and serious efforts related to IT security, the USA is never mentioned?
Sure, we've got the airforce doing this and some twig of the FBI doing that, but where's the real commitment to security? Where's the offensive capability and overwhelming manpower the Chinese supposedly have? Where's the planning that seems to be happening in Europe? We're sending an "observer" -- WTF?
I'd love to believe we're just smarter about it. What's the point of broadcasting you have attack power on something as covert as IT -- in peacetime? But somehow I doubt it.
NSA is near god-like in terms of technical prowess; does anybody think we're utilizing it like we should?
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
"Why bother with a nation which at state level acknowledges fascism"
Where did you get that from? I AM an estonian and I can assure you that this is absolutely ridiculous. You are either a troll or you read the russian propaganda news.
Please - stop posting this nonsense.
Fascist government? What are you smoking dude?
I (as an estonian) can assure you that all the news that you read from russian newspapers are lies. Stop trolling
Russian propaganda has got you nevertheless... The exaggerated glaims by Russia which are fed to their public are very hypocritical considering the facism, neonazism, racism, putinjugend and human rights violations present in Russia.
I'd say its not Estonia playing up, but Russia, whose people still worship the old Soviet Nation. Can you believe they actually believe the soviets "liberated" Estonia in World War II? But estonians still very well remember the mass deportations and silent genocide conducted by the KGB.
As for present-day Russia - they're cocky again and are looking to rule over neighbouring nations. The false information they're planting into the minds of their citizens clearly indicates they are hostile toward other nations. It's definately a global threat!
Amazing but I must encourage this fortifying of the internet against the terrorist and evil forig ....... collapses helpless with laughter. A hub, a fucking hub. These people are way beyond clueless.
Just let them think you are using floppy disks and 1200 baud modems.
You anonymous coward! Need I remind you the soviets had already conquered Estonia by the time the nazis came? Therefore the nazis were at first seen by many as someone to liberate us from the soviet rule which had oppressed us by then already. Estonians just wanted to have their free country, not to be under russian influence. Nazism as an ideology was not supported! Estonians remember the crimes of nazis in Estonia, but the crimes soviet russia did in Estonia during and after the war are by far greater in number and extent.
Estonia commemorates all estonians that fought for the freedom of Estonia. We fought alongside germany when the soviets conquered us, and we fought alongside russia when nazis conquered us. We supported neither ideology, all we ever wanted is a free country and peace. Both nazis and soviets tried to enslave us, russia succeeded for a short while. As far as most estonians are concerned the nazis and the soviets were not much different. Both were ruthless tyrants towards Estonia, "pigs" if you like. Russia still appears to be a tyrant nation as indicated by its foreign policies.
Russia, for God's sake, leave us be! We're no match for your military - please stop bullying us.
NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization
There is no such organization as Nato as spelled in the article summary and possibly the article but who reads the articles?
I don't really understand why are you so excited. I didn't say that Russia has been always nice to Baltic states - it hasn't. Yes, I am aware of the conquest and of the armed opposition that took place after it. However, my point was that the United States (or any other major power for that sake) is no better. They just handle propaganda much more skillfully.
Besides, has there been an independent Estonian state before the Russian Empire dissolved around 1917? No? For how long? Oh. So, one may also say that Russia aka USSR in 1940 retook the territories it lost in 1917, which had been its part for literally centuries?
if FREEDOM, as you put it, comes at a price of fighting on NAZI side - this is definitely NOT the kind of freedom quite a few of us see, and you can't buy that.
if we dont fight em over there we will have to fight em over here.
United States (or any other major power for that sake) is no better.
How the hell is that supposed to justify what Russia has done to Estonia? Why are we even talking about the US?
Setting up a cyber-defence HQ in Estonia akin to building a strategic nuclear command-and-control facility in Nagasaki.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Defining moral laws (sort of 'do not invade' or 'do not lie') is meaningful as long as there's a possibility not to violate them. If there's an example of a modern state being rich and powerful while at the same time always respecting other countries (not bombing them, not occupying, not sabotaging their production or inciting revolts), then all those countries who do not follow the same rules are to be condemned.
The thing is that there are no such countries. All the powerful countries I know about protect their national interests, using military force if needed. The only difference between them is the quality of the propaganda they produce to justify their actions.
What!
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Security guru Bruce Schneier's Cryptogram newsletter has a good blurb on this issue and the topic of whether this was some disgruntled Estonian youths or was the "evil Russian gov't" that was responsible for the attacks.
Few people would care about a statue and launch a cyber war. That was a tomb where Russian soldiers were buried.
Because I think Russia (and a lot of other places) use the argument "if country X is a bastard, then I can be one too". It's a stupid argument, and Russia and the US should defend their own actions without referring to others.
As far as this issue goes, I think Russia is getting over some self identity issues, and Estonia has aggravated this. Russia used to be a big empire, both under the Czars and the Communists, and this is part of the national psyche. So after the fall of the Soviet empire, there was some moves made to at least keep a sphere of influence. Also, Russians considered their country to be a hero and great liberator in World War 2. Another part of their national self esteem.
So now here's the loss of face issue: Estonia, who used to be a part of USSR, firmly within the desired Russian sphere of influence, rejects them. A country that Russians feel should be grateful, after all they were "liberated" from the Nazis and had many decades of Soviet control. But instead, the Russification hadn't taken hold and the Estonians actually joined NATO instead.
To the Russians, having a former "friend" join NATO is a major insult and a severe loss of face. Then it all blew up badly when a statue commemorating Soviet Occupation (or liberation, whatever) was moved.
(In parallels with the US, note that many people were pissed off that France didn't back us with the Iraq war, citing that the US had liberated them from the Nazis. Some quotes being "if it weren't for us, they'd be speaking German today". The parallel attitude being that if we helped you in the past, you should to be our toady today.)
Interesting to see a parallel with Finland. Both have a similar language. Both countries were part of the Swedish empire for a long time, then taken over by the Russian empire and had a period of Russification. Both declare independence after the Russian revolution, and both have Nazi and Soviet occupations. Finland though keeps independence after the war and acts as a buffer between the east and west, whereas Estonia was forcibly annexed during the war. So any talk of "Estonia was part of Russia for centuries" is silly if it also ignores Finland. (and "centuries" is two by the way)
Do you have borderline personality disorder, or are you just retarded.
We are talking about the US because every political discussion around here devolves into US-bashing. At the risk of stating the obvious, there's a lot of anti-US venom in the world. In an international forum like this, sooner of later someone will choose to justify a position by comparing xyz atrocity to something the US has done.
Sometimes they use historical fact (sometimes distorted), sometimes they will trot out their favorite conspiracy theory (attn. tinfoil hatters: I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I'm not often convinced by your "proof"), or they will troll a fat pack of lies.
Regardless of the validity of their accusation, they always seem to miss the point: You can't justify bad behavior by pointing out other bad behavior.