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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."
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.
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.
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.
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?
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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.
Being a member of the EU now, Estonia must answer to its fellow EU members when it formulates foreign policy decisions. If Estonia makes a decision that could in any way weaken Estonia, it weakens the EU.
Based on current trends, Russia's present population doesn't necessarily serve as an argument that it is a major player worth taking into account. The birthrate of ethnic Russians is going down quickly, the birthrate of minorities (many of which, like the Finno-Ugrian Mari, support Estonia against Moscow) is going up, not to mention the huge presence of Chinese squatters all over the Russian Far East. Russia is going from a big, strong important nation to one very close to being torn apart. That's why a lot of people think bullying Estonia and trying to re-establish a sphere of influence is a sign of desperation.
Both my grandpas were murdered by russians after we "cooperated" with Russia in 1941. Practically every estonian have relatives who have been murdered, deported or imprisoned by russians. What a wonderful neighbours we have for cooperation!