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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!
Somebody set up us the hub!
I work for the Department of Disinformation and Psychological Warfare at Microsoft. Sounded cool when I applied but I just spend all my time trolling slashdot and submitting bits of Windows source code to ReactOS.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Estonians have always rejected Russian interference in their affairs.
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
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.
Well, Estonia is an independent nation and a member of NATO - how much more "encroachment" can this be?
And if you ask me, the rest of the world pays far too much attention to Russian whining about the lost glories of their empire as it is. The Russian government deliberately and systematically attacked Estonia's infrastructure last year - now NATO should place the defence hub somewhere else so as to be sensitive to Russian feelings? Ridiculous.
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.
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
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
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!
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.
Estonia, like many other Baltic nations and former Soviet satellite nations, are in the middle of a constant power struggle between East and West. Your argument comparing Oregon and Estonia is pretty much irrational, due to the fact that Oregon does not have the Russian foreign service trying to alter its foreign agenda. Russia, which has pretty much dominated Estonia and most other Baltic nations since the early 19th century, has become a resurgent power with expanding capabilities and has been using those resources to coerce its former vassals to move away from the influence of the EU. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, including utilizing cyber attacks on an emerging economy. For many nations, the Internet is a key tool in bringing their economies up to date and becoming competitive.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
"The Russian government deliberately and systematically attacked Estonia's infrastructure last year"
This is of course pure bullshit (tm). And yes, I am Estonian too and know quite a bit about this "attack". Essentially some pissed of guys bought DDoS against some Estonian websites (mainly media and some government) and that was it. There were nothing special in this DDoS, just http queries coming from host of usual suspects (countries with lax security & no ISP filtering of bad traffic) - no notable traffic from Russia.
Of course the DDoS was bad in our context, our 100mbit line was something like 98-99% full and only upstream filters at ISP managed to block it. But was it cyberwar by Russia? Hardly.
__
L.
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.
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)