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."

The real outcome of the attacks

[Mario21]

By now, most of the sites under attack have been blocked to the outside traffic. That by itself means the attacks have been successful, information from Estonian government stays in the country.

How would you you fight a DDoS attack and make sure all non-bot users have access?

They forgot something.

[rumith]

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. Estonia is seen as a neo-fascist regime by Russia, 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 and education for children, based on their nationality, and be seen otherwise. Of course, Europe and the United States ignore this issue.

Economix

[packetmon]

This reminds me of 2001 Chinese hackers said Tuesday they have begun to hit American computer networks with denial-of-service attacks, and also claim to have placed mass-attack tools into four large American computer networks. A new alert from the FBI-led National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) confirms that hackers have been particularly active over the past two days. The distributed-denial-of-service attacks on the Department of the Interior's National Business Center, the U.S. Geological Survey's site and Pacific Bell Internet Services are among the largest so far. (Is This World Cyber War I [wired.com]).

Economics will eventually take a big hit in the future with regards to cyberwarfare. A lot of times I'll read articles and comments with "so what better computers then people". Often those commenting don't think about the repercussions that come from a collapsed economy... That will lead to a shoddier quality of life, more crime and eventually more violence. Isn't this the case for the gaming community with so called "Gold Farmers" from China waging off-line attacks now... Meaning people actually escalating a scenario to non Internet mediums...

Re:Common Sense

[Control Group]

The problem is the flaws that are being attacked aren't necessarily resident on the machines being attacked - as you know, since you mention zombie computers.

But that doesn't make cyber attack bullshit. That's like saying that land invasions are a made up boogeyman because they depend on flaws like "not having a giant impregnable wall surrounding your country." DDoS attacks, in particular, are problematic. A given target has no way to prevent zombied machines from participating in the attack.

Besides which, a DDoS attack is just a bandwidth race. If my home PC were to be attacked like this, there's nothing I, personally, can do about it. My router won't pass any of the packets to my machine, but if there's 6 Mbps worth of incoming traffic, even if I drop it at the router, I still can't get much legit traffic through. I can call my provider, and see if they can stop it upstream, but then it's just a comparison of the bandwidth at the DSLAM to the bandwidth of the attacker. The only thing to hope for is that, somewhere up the chain, you can reach a node with enough bandwidth that the attacker can't overwhelm it. When you start getting up into backbone territory, this isn't a problem.

But - if we hypothesize for the moment an actual planned assault by a country - odds are pretty good that the US DoD, for example, has more bandwidth than Iran.

Re:Russia or Russians?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first attacks come from Russia's governmental institutions, but later from typical rented botnets. The big question is why would, say romanian cybercriminals waste their botnets for something like that. No gain. Of course it is very hard to prove that the Russian government is behind this (it could be also some rich "patriotic" russian mobster). Russia denies involvement, but then again they are not also imposing trade sanctions neither... NOT. Oil and coal transit has de facto stopped, estonian goods are banned from shops, border closed for big trucks etc.

Re:Russia or Russians?

[MightyMartian]

I think the general consensus among those who watch the geopolitical scene is that Russia is attempting to rebuild its empire. It views the Baltic states pretty much as China views Tibet, but because of their NATO membership, Russia can't just march the troops in, so it's using agent provocateurs from among the ethnic Russian minority in the country as well as defacto economic sanctions and cyber attacks to push its weight around. If you think what Russia is doing in Estonia is bad, look at the kind of games they're playing in the Ukraine, which is furiously trying to Westernize and shed its Russian colonial past. Christ, they poisoned Viktor Yushchenko to prevent him from gaining power. The KGB is still very much alive and well. Russia may have had a brief flirtation with friendly relations with the West, but they day is done, and now it wants its empire back.

Cut Russia off the net

[gorbachev]

I've said this again, but until Russia (and other Eastern bloc countries) start taking cybercrime seriously, it should just be cut off the net entirely.

Most of the botnets in the world are controlled by Russian mafia. The rest of the world is spending an insane amount of time, money and effort defending against these attacks that orginate 90% from one part of the world. It's like criminally created welfare program, and we're all paying.

Re:bullshit

[Anon99]

>if estonians were so superior and above all this lowly nationalistic nonsense, they wouldn't have cared about removing the statue. the truth is of course that estonians are deeply insulted by the statue, and it is a point of estonian pride to remove it

The statue has also practical meaning.

It has become focus point of Russian nationalists in Estonia who are Estonian version of neo nazis. Given any excuses those nationalists used to gather near the statue, get drunk and start breaking places, and in many cases also people, including tourists.

The problems did get bad enough that Finnish tourists were advised to steer clear of the statue during night.

And since tourism is important income to Estonia, it is clear that the statue had to go. They could have picked better time to do it, like couple months after victory day celebrations.

Re:They forgot something.

[ghoul]

The comparison with latinos in the US is a false comparison. Latinos born in the US are US citizens no matter what language they speak. They are not forced to undergo citizenship tests. That the EU would admit such a country which discriminates against a large minority is a sad reflection on the EU but then again having lived both in US and Europe I do know that Europeans are a lot more racist than Americans are. And since when is Estonia an independent country? It has never been independent in its history. Till WW1 it was part of the Russian empire. After WW1 a lot of artificial countries were created in order to punish the Germans and the Communists who had left the war early. Look at what happened to the artificial Czechoslovakia, East Prussia, Yugoslavia etc. Just drawing lines on a map does not a country make. Amongst the Baltic states only the Lithunians have ever been a real independent country. Estonia was a creation of politics. Just speaking a language does not make a separate nation. India has more than 800 languages and 8000 dialects Would you suggest India should be 800 countires? And yes most of the areas of India speaking even the non official languages are bigger than Estonia. Basically a country which collaborated with the Nazis wants to go back to its fascist past and it is inconvenient to have statues around reminding people that last time they tried to be good little Nazis the Russians kicked their butt. The insecurity of the Estonians manifests in their persecution of the Russian minority. What would the world say if Scotland was to put conditions on English residents of Scotland that they have to learn Scottish or be treated as illegal immigrants? Europe has a very murky past. There have been lots of wars and atrocities and lots of populations have moved around. To enforce language based citizenship wont work and is against the spirit of the EU. Also a common bugaboo of the fascist apologists is Stalin sent people to Siberia. Yes Stalin sent people to Siberia but it was to staff the industries which had been packed up and moved beyond the Urals to protect them from the Germans. This has been always considered a marvel of logistics and strategy as if Stalin had not moved the industries when the Germans captured them WW2 would be pretty much over with only the mopping up of USA left to do for the Nazis. So how can you compliment a leader for a great decision moving the factories and criticize him for moving the workers for those factories?

A different Estonian perspective

[piggydoggy]

Here's another Estonian perspective, to complement the "official" line above:

- The memory of WW2 is, hopefully obviously for most Slashdotters, very very important for all Russians wherever they may live.

- The monument in question was the prime memorial spot, primarily for the Russian population, to commemorate the war and the victory, in the country.

- The monument in question - quite inoffensive statue of a mourning soldier in Soviet uniform - had stood at its spot for 60 years, including all of Estonia's reindependence, with respect and dignity, without any problems, or almost anyone associating it with Communism.

- Some hardcore nationalists (some of whom could be considered neo-nazis) apparently disagreed, and had staged some earlier acts of vandalism against the monument, which in context, made it all the more dearer for those who held it dear for the local Russians.

- After another provocation on the 9th of May last year, the government basically simply assumed the so far ultranationalist stance, protesting not the provokers, or people who might be using the memory of WW2 for propaganda, but claiming that the *monument*, which had stood there just fine for many decades, had somehow, overnight, turned into a horrible symbol of Soviet repression, removal of which is supposedly a matter of honor and principle. Basically, very foolishly and irresponsibly, pitting the respect of WW2 against the respect for the country.

- Transferring a statue from one place to another might not seem to be such a big deal, but it's all about the context. The government basically agreed to the same stance the few neo-nazis in the country had, yet didn't make the slightest attempt to address the concerns of those (mainly Russians) who legitimately saw it as a symbol of defeat over Nazism, and had done so for decades. On the contrary, the honorers of the monument were smeared in the media and portrayed as drunks who use the war as an excuse to drunkenly dance on graves and to glorify the Soviet power. This ignorance and disrespect towards things the Russians hold dear, resonated deeply with other political issues, and the local Russians' feelings of inequality and guilt-tripping for things Stalin did before most of them were even born.

- As the government would *still* go on with the oh-so-inconsequential plan of transferring that sad statue to its new place, somehow figuring that using riot police and tear gas on the thousands protesters was justified... in order to appease a nationalist frenzy the government themselves had spun up. Rioting, looting and vandalism ensued. Not because of the statue, not because of the history, but out of hate for the government which, by removing the monument, the presumptions, excuses and justifications for doing so, demonstrated utter contempt and disregard towards the local Russian community, which then essentially responded with "f..k you".

Anyway, what I wanted to say as far as Slashdot is concerned:

Great majority of Russians are GENUINELY p...ed off against Estonia, not because of history, not because of the statue, but because of the hateful, spiteful attitude the government has displayed and keeps displaying towards its Russian countrymen, and which the removal of the statue, despite countless pleas, debates, warnings for the whole year, was a glaring testament of. According to the latest polls, only 6% of Russians on either side of the border agreed with the Estonian government's actions, and a whole lot more people are more upset than that.

Hence, it is more than likely that the DDOS attacks are in fact spontaneous activism, and not sponsored by Kremlin, which has different and less obvious means at its disposal.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[skarphace]

In "Soviet America" the Government probably very rarely DDoS'es Citibank to smitherines, now does it? Or takes down the website of the Venezuelan President? How likely is that?

Would we even know if we are engaged in cyber warfare right now?