Russia Accused of Cyber-War Against Estonia

earthlingpink writes about the ongoing DDoSing of Estonia. The Guardian is reporting that Russia stands accused of engaging in a three-week-long series of cyber-attacks. Government, banking, and media websites have been targeted. It is unclear whether the attacks are sanctioned or initiated by the Russian Government, but Estonian authorities believe that to be the case. NATO has sent security experts to Tallinn to help beef up defenses. The Estonian defense minister said, "At present, NATO does not define cyber-attacks as a clear military action. This means that the provisions of... collective self-defense, will not automatically be extended to the attacked country... this matter needs to be resolved in the near future."

Re:They forgot something.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you get your facts from?

Every last russian, who is willing to learn the national language is granted citizenship in Estonia
Education is available (on all levels) in both Estonian and Russian

Re:They forgot something.

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary doesn't mention that the attacks started after Estonia began excavating graves of Soviet troops killed during the World War II and vandalized the memorial devoted to them.
Vandalized? Moved to cemetery where it belongs.

Estonia is seen as a neo-fascist regime by Russia, and in my opinion, rightly so
Russia is seen as imperialist regime by Estonia, and in my opinion, rightly so

you can't deny over 30% of your population [estimate of Russian population in Estonia] the most basic rights, including citizenship
You learn the language, pass one exam and voila - the citizenship is yours.

and education for children based on their nationality, and be seen otherwise.
We have schools for Russian-speaking children where most of the subjects are taught in Russian. Unbelievable, yes?

Of course, Europe and the United States ignore this issue.
And Russians ignore the reality. I'm sorry if you do not agree.

Actually this has happened before, to the USA

[mungurk]

The Guardian article is not correct, in stating "the first known incidence of such an assault on a state". James Adams published an article entitled "Virtual Defense" from Foreign Affairs, May/June 2001 that details a number of cyber-attacks on a massive scale, against the United States. Specifically the Pentagon, NASA, as well as private universities and research laboratories, and a number of military defense contractors were targeted and the security breaches were enourmous, with highly sensitive documents vulnerable. Here is a link to the article (brief preview, then they make it available for purchase - sorry) http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20010501faessay4771/ james-adams/virtual-defense.html [foreignaffairs.org] According to Foreign Affairs: The U.S. government now believes that more than 30 nations have developed aggressive computer-warfare programs. The list includes Russia and China, volatile governments such as Iran and Iraq, and U.S. allies such as Israel and France...The hackers have built "back doors" through which they can re-enter the infiltrated systems at will and steal further data; they have also left behind tools that reroute specific network traffic through Russia. [end of excerpt] The danger here is very high, especially for small businesses, who certainly do not have the technical resources of the US military (and even that was breached). Many small businesses have military contracts, etc. In short, this is a genuine act of war, and the potential for breaches of security across small businesses in the US (or really anywhere) is very high.

Re:They forgot something.

[LizardKing]

Nope the starting point of this was the relocation of a large statue of a Soviet soldier from central Tallinn to a Soviet Army military cemetery on the outskirts of the city. The Estonians were occupied twice by the Soviet Union, once at the beginning of World War II and again at the end. The second occupation was billed as a liberation of Estonia by the Soviets, but both times large numbers of Estonians were deported to labour camps in the east of the Soviet Union, many to never return. As a result, the statue came to symbolise the occupation of Estonia, and it was felt it should not be in the centre of the countries capital.

During the Soviet era, a large number of ethnic Russians were settled in Estonia and a program of Russification carried out that tried to extinguish Estonian language and culture. This was a common policy across the Soviet Union, as it was seen as a way of preventing a future break up of the union. The Putin government plays on the tensions amongst these former Soviet populations as a way of reasserting Russias importance in the region.

The bodies that are often mentioned in the news reports are actually located some distance from the original site of the statue. They have been located (there was no sign of their presence above ground) under a tram stop and road junction. Excavation was carried out, and the coffins relocated to the same cemetery as the statue. This is in accordance with war graves agreements that are part of internation law.

Re:Russia or Russians?

[bockelboy]

According to rumor, Russia has been up to a lot of subterfuge in Estonia lately.

It didn't make US news, of course, but Estonia just had some of the first riots in their capital, Talin. Lately, the Estonian government has been removing Soviet war memorials because, well, they partly respresented the Soviets ruling their country. Just like the Russians have been doing in Moscow, they remove them all and have a single statue garden (they are historical, after all).

However, when they removed one statue of a Soviet soldier in a cemetary, thousands of Russians living in Estonia started protesting. Now, maybe the Russian population just liked that particular statue, but there were rumors that Russian agents were stirring up trouble just to stir up trouble.

Russia's been flexing its muscles across Eastern Europe again. They've been punishing "bad" countries which disobey them. First the riots (which were suspected to be caused by Moscow), now cyber attacks. Neither are outright military moves, but they sure as hell get the message across.

Combined with the recent crackdown on free media and opposition in Russia, it sounds like life might get interesting in 5 years. It seems that, with America's short attention span focused on Iraq, Russia has been putting the pieces in place to recapture former glory.

Do you think that after 50 years that Boris the Soviet simply retired to the countryside? Or has he just been waiting patient for the right opportunity?

Maybe I just haven't had enough coffee this morning to make the conspiracy theories go away.

Re:They forgot something.

[dgr73]

And the Russians, who are so indignant that their soldiers bodies were "desecrated" by moving them to a military cemetary, seem to forget one historical fact: They themselves cared very little for their own dead in WWII. Not that they cared too much for the living either. The road to Berlin is littered with unburied bodies.

As to who is doing the "cyber attacks". It's hard to determine the origin of a DDoS attack, but the timing and context seems to point to Russian intervention. However, this is unlikely to be direct government intervention, but rather it uses a proxy organization such as the Putin Youth (Nashi). The same government sponsored (but nominally independent) group attacked the Estonian embassy. Correct me if i'm wrong, but could this not be construed as casus belli in an of itself (that is, if Estonia had such designs and the capability to carry them to a conclusion). If the Russians are willing attack an embassy, which results in no real economic damage to Estonia, but huge reputational damage to Russia, why would they shy from sponsoring DDoS attacks against Estonia to cause real economic damage?

Re:I can confirm

[Anonymous Coward]

..or to put it another way: if ten generations before his ancestors (in total 1024 individuals) included 341 Estonians his genetic makeup would consist of 33.30078125% Estonian genes, which is about 1/3. Furthermore, this doesn't take into account that not all genes have the same probability of being transmitted to the coming generations, e.g. if his grandmother had 1/2 Estonian genes it is possible that he himself inherited 2/3 of her Estonian genes making him 1/3 Estonian.

Re:Common Sense

[LizardKing]

For the love of freedom, just patch the boxes and shut up!

You just don't get it do you? A DDOS is not indicative of a flaw in the systems under attack, it is using the regular means of access to the systems (HTTP requests mostly) but doing it on a massive scale from machines around the world taht have been compromised. Or are you suggesting that Estonian sysadmins perform the impossible and patch all these lousy Windows boxes on various ISP accounts around the world?

Unless you've experienced a large scale DDOS or read the detailed summary of how one was handled then all I can suggest is looking at some descriptions of what a DDOS is. Wikipedia is a good start. Our Payment Service Provider received a blackmail threat a couple of years ago, and then experienced a massive ten day long DDOS attack. Once it was over they provided us with a very detailed account of the attack. What impressed me was the sheer number of machines used in the attack and how evenly spread around the world they were. Trying to contact the relevant sysadmins or ISPs for these machines was simply not feasible.

Re:Do you really know what are you talking about ?

[Hoi Polloi]

in honour of the Russian soldiers that died occupying Estonia

Nice try, it was put there for the soldiers that died freeing the country of the Nazis. What happened during the occupation is a different matter but don't try to rewrite history.

Since you are using the "If the US..." metaphor then how about if US war cemetaries in France and Belgium were dug up and moved and the monuments carted off? I think we'd be pretty upset.

Funny that you should mention Israel in your comment. Seeing as the Baltic states collaborated with the Nazis in exterminating Jews [wikipedia.org].

I agree that Russia should face up to what they did after the war but to dismiss their sacrifices during WWII and to make the Baltic states look like innocent lambs is disgraceful. Don't lump one with the other.

Re:Russia or Russians?

[tomatensaft]

You got it all wrong! :) But well, since nobody here apparently reads neither Estonian [postimees.ee], nor Russian [delfi.ee]-language sources, you can bullshit them as much as you like... :) The Soviet soldier, standing on Tõnismäe, was indeed a symbol of Soviet regime for some, but has been left untouched until now because it was a World War II memorial and also a place of a mass grave. Because of its nature (it's depicting a Soviet soldier after all), it became a place of political demonstrations by two extremist opposing forces: Russian pro-soviets, with some younger "national-bolshevik" exteremists and Estonian nationalists with a mix of Estonian younger neo-nazis. It was perceived as a threat to social stability and thus it was decided to exhumate the remnants of those buried there and move them to a grave, together with the monument.

Re:The real outcome of the attacks

[Anon99]

Actually the Estonian response has been textbook example on how to fight DOS. Almost all pages that have been attacked have been in Estonian, and have been such that only someone living in country might have use for. So they have excluded outside traffic in favour of serving those who actually have use for the pages. Exactly the same I would do if I would be responsible of pages that have 99% of user base in same country. Sucks for those Estonians living outside of Estonia, but needs of many outweigh needs of few in this case.

Re:Yuschenko and the CIA revolution?

[niiler]

While it was no walk in the park, so long as you were neither Jewish nor Romani, life was quite a lot better under German occupation than under Russian occupation. (Jews and Romani had it as bad in Estonia under the Nazis as anywhere in occupied Europe.) Here in the West, we view Hitler as the arch villain. In Estonia, it is Stalin who is viewed as such. Therefore when you make a statement alluding to how "millions of soldiers died fighting the Nazis and protecting Estonia" you display an ignorance of history. It is like saying that the wolf is protecting the rabbit when it drives off the hawk. Truly the Estonians wanted neither the Russians NOR the Germans as overlords.

Re:They forgot something.

[crocodilexp]

You make some good points from the Estonian point of view, but there is more to the issue. Most importantly, note that Staling was not Russian, nor did Russian people ever choose or elect him in any meaningful way. Soviet occupation of Estonia was indeed marked with arresting intellectuals and shipping thousands of people off to Siberia. Terrible, but not significantly different from what Stalin did in other parts of the USSR, including Russia itself. Indeed, it was Soviet policy to encourage Russians to settle all over the USSR, in order to unify and strengthen the country. I'm not defending the Soviets, but for a vast, multi-ethnic country, this policy does make practical sense. Not many of the Russians settlers deliberately chose to oppress Estonians, and many might not have chosen to move there -- it was a Soviet policy. When it comes to the citizenship question, your analogy with Spanish speakers in the U.S. is flawed. Most present-day Russians in Estonia were born there, and have no other land or citizenship. The situation to Estonia is more analogous to the hypothetical example of Canada stripping all Quebecois (French-speaking, natural-born Canadians) of citizenship until they passed an English exam. It would, of course, cause an uproar and be a significant human rights violation.

DDoS attacks have been a great practice for them

[sgraphics]

You obviously aren't from Estonia.

If you are talking solely about Estonian history then yes Nazi troops were nothing compared to soviet terror when about 10% of the population was deported, families torn, culture destroyed, people arrested, killed, houses pillaged by Russian soldiers etc. Read up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Baltic_ Republics [wikipedia.org]
http://www.historycommission.ee/temp/pdf/conclusio ns_en.pdf [historycommission.ee]

The problem with this bronze soldier issue is that
1) Estonians hate their soviet occupation period and want NOTHING to remind them of it. Especially red flags appearing every year (9th of May) in the city center by the Bronze Soldier (now moved to cemetery) provoking both sides and creating more hate.
2) Russia has great pride and thinks of themselves as the leaders of all. And also they think of them as saviors of the world of Nazis. This all makes this monument important to them.

There is truth to both sides.

The thing is this all should actually have nothing to do with Russia and it is unfortunate how they keep shitting on their small neighbors.

About all the oppression talk: you can get Estonian citizenship really easily. I think there is zero oppression of the Russian minority in Estonia. They have had 20 years to learn Estonian, exams are easy as hell, all the biggest newspapers, internet sites, tv news are translated. The second biggest political party is very Russian friendly.

Also I have many friends that are Russian and they are doing exceptionally well in their field of business here (btw they all have learned our language) and they think Estonia to be their fatherland. Damn, I had a Russian girlfriend :)

Stop messing with our country, Russia.