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."

I can confirm

[Anonymous Coward]

As an American-Estonian (1/3 Estonian on my Mother's side), I can confirm that Russia has been attacking my programming project, making it impossible to debug. And THAT boss is why the project isn't done yet! What can I do when all of Russia is against me?

Where did I hear about this attack? Uh.. slashd... an on-line news source specializing in technical news of course!

Re:I can confirm

[mfarah]

As an American-Estonian (1/3 Estonian on my Mother's side),

How can you be ONE THIRD something? I'd understand 1/2 or 1/4 or 1/8 (etc.)

Or, perhaps, you're 1/3 SWEDISH. }:->

(I know I'd be downmodded for this, but I HAD to say it)

Re:I can confirm

[Anonymous Coward]

1/3 is binary 0.0101010101... , so obviously his grandfather, great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-great-grandfather and (great-great-)^n grandfather are all Estonian, while the rest of his relatives are completely !Estonian.

Re:I can confirm

[ichigo 2.0]

How can you be ONE THIRD something? I'd understand 1/2 or 1/4 or 1/8 (etc.)

Ménage à trois? ;)

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Conversation" in that family:

Son: Daddy, where did I come from?
Dad: Well son, when a man, and a woman, and another woman love each other very much...

Russia or Russians?

[grev]

Are they accusing the Russian government of perpetrating this attack, or are they stating that this attack is coming from Russian soil?

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:Russia or Russians?

[niiler]

As an Estonian-American, I can confirm that we Estonians are a might bit riled up about the Russians. On June 13-14, 1941 huge numbers of Estonians were forcibly deported to Siberia. Another deportation occurred in 1949. Then Russians were imported to re-occupy many of the vacant households. Estonians view this as a sort of ethnic cleansing. Estonians were forced to speak Russian in the school system and all traces of their former nationalism were banned. To put it bluntly, many Estonians viewed the occupations under Stalin (and later) as being the worst thing to ever happen to the country (including the Nazi occupation). Putting up Russian war monuments on Estonian soil was insulting to boot. Now the Russians are riled that the Estonians want to move such monuments from their places of prominence (not destroy, mind you, but move). Considering what Estonians have suffered at the hands of Russians, we tend to think that the Russians have no ground to lodge any kind of complaint.

Re:

[jotok]

Just like the US government granted independence to the Native Americans--from their land.

Re:

[Viol8]

"Stalin was just undoing mistakes of his predecessors"

How is deporting thousands of people to Siberia "undoing his mistakes"? Stalin was just a ruthless vile dictator and IMO the Allies would have done well to destrou the russian army after they'd destroyed the german army at the end of the 2nd world war. Then we wouldn't have had 50 years of idiot communists in Moscow oppressing half of europe and threatening world peace.

Moron.

Re:

[Cyberax]

I meant that granting Estonia independence in 1918 was a mistake of the early communists. Stalin was merely undoing this mistake.

As for 'vile dictator'... Europe would have been conquered completely if it was not for USSR.

But there's no such thing as a gratitude in international politics. Russia understood this well in 90-s.

Re:

[khallow]

How dare you call it 'occupation'??

Let's see. It's a statement of the obvious. And there's no risk involved to the teller. What "daring" was needed to called it what it was?

Stalin was just undoing mistakes of his predecessors - including giving independency from Russian Empire to Estonia in 1918.

And the world would have been better off if those "mistakes" remained uncorrected. Also, Stalin was one of the biggest mistakes that the Soviets ever made. They should have killed him in the late 20's when

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.

Re:

[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 oppo

Re:

[bockelboy]

Sorry for mistakes in the summary of the statue business - it wasn't the point of my comment. Thanks for the correction, I claim no special knowledge of Estonia other than what I remembered from BBC articles a month or two ago.

The point still is that there are rumors that the Russian government is stirring up trouble in Estonia and other Baltic states. There's no hard proof, but this and the statue incident make things look awful suspicious. Is it past the conspiracy theory-type stuff yet? Maybe not.

Is

Yuschenko and the CIA revolution?

[ghoul]

I see when the CIA pays street thugs to protest against a legitimate election and get it overturned its called an Orange revolution. Maybe Orange is for the color of the Euro notes handed out by CIA operatives to fund it. But when people protest the removal of war memorials commemorating millions of soldiers who died fighting the Nazis and protecting Estonia its Russian agents? How would you react if somehow a Latino president comes to power and orders the demolition of the Alamo as it represents Yankee col

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:

[bockelboy]

Sorry, I left that one kind of ambiguous. The point is that a lot of Estonians believe that Russians are stirring up problems.

Russians have been moving a lot of statues to statue gardens, especially some of the old baddies (Stalin era folk). The Estonians were doing the same thing with a lot of old Soviet statues.

The statue in question wasn't of anyone "bad" per se - it was just a soldier. The question is, does the statue represent a war memorial or a memorial of Soviet domination of Estonia? To an ethn

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?

Re:

[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 ne

reminds of

[circletimessquare]

the Hainan Island incident [wikipedia.org]

before 9/11 in early 2001, a chinese jet fighter bumped a us spy plane it was trying to harass away. the chinese fighter crashed and the pilot was never found, and the spy plane was forced to make an emergency landing on hainan island, where the chinese stripped the plane of equipment and then returned the crew to the usa

what happened for a few tense weeks was a lot of nationalistic chest thumping by chinese and american hackers: chinese hackers defacing poorly patched american servers, everything from small businesses to government systems, and american hackers defacing chinese servers: schools and government (i remember this well as i had a box that was hacked: my home page was replaced with a chinese flag and a "fuck usa", heh)

the point is, it's probably not official, it's probably by an independent group of weakly organized russian hackers upset due to nationalistic pride

the trigger for them is that statue that estonia got rid of in tallinn, which russians probably view as thousands of dead soldiers in the defense of estonia from the nazis, and estonia being ungrateful, and estonians viewing as an example of soviet domination, and a symbol of the past cold war era, and russians trying to retain their dominance

regardless, i expect some pissed off estonian hackers soon to plaster "in soviet russia, estonia hackers hack you!" all over pravda.ru, or something

Maybe

[Infonaut]

the point is, it's probably not official, it's probably by an independent group of weakly organized russian hackers upset due to nationalistic pride

Given that it is now Putin's Russia, I'm not so sure. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were some winking and nodding coming from the Russian security apparatus.

i might be inclined to agree with you

[circletimessquare]

however, i like my tea to be polonium 210 free

ehem, cough

whistling nonchalantly, strolling away...

hello brawling estonians and russians

[circletimessquare]

i would like to open this nationalistic chest thumping thread with an exhortation from the rest of us here at slashdot: please be extremely hysterical and hot-headed and entertaining

please be accusing each other's mothers of various acts of bestiality and extreme promiscuity, and do not go lightly on the creative threats of violence, including skewering the eyes with pokers, and the twisting of testicles in various farm machinery. proper english grammar is optional, in fact, it is better if your english grammar is nonexistent

ok, my popcorn is ready, any russian want to respond to the above estonian?

go!

dude

[circletimessquare]

i am not vouching for the authenticity of one view or another, i am merely stating that there are two different views, a russian one, and an estonian one. obviously, both sides are very emotional about it

bu if you ask you me anyways, my personal attitude is that you poor poles, lithuanians, latvians and estonians have been the battleground of the power struggle between berlin and moscow for centuries. i champion the underdog and the little guy, and that's obviously estonia in this case, so i'm with you:

fuck

there are two themes playing here

[circletimessquare]

one is russia reasserting its dominance on its smaller neighbors. the other is ingratitutde at world war ii era sacrifices

i think the former is far more important than the latter, because the former is current, and the latter is dim and fading history (albeit emotional)

and yes, i think the usa would be raising an outcry if france were moving the cemetaries of its war dead. however, i also think that vichy france doesn't represent all of french attitude at the time, nor do i think that the usa is currently e

Re:dude

[tokul]

If the French or Belgians started digging up American WWII cemetaries and moving them I'd be pretty pissed too. Lots of Russians died fighting the Germans in the Baltics in WWII and these countries aided and abetted the Nazis (including the holocaust). Size has nothing to do with the ability to be selfrightious so I don't see why size (or Germany in this case) has anything to do with it.

Since you remind about holocaust, remember gulag. Millions of people from Baltic states died there. And deportations started one year before Germany attacked SSSR.

Americans haven't occupied France and Belgium for 45 years. Russians haven't liberated Estonia. In 1944 Estonia one occupant was replaced by other. If Sadam's statue is erected in Kuwait, do people of Kuwait have to leave it in front of emir's palace after Iraqies are gone. Did Russians had to leave Stalin next to Lenin in Mausoleum after 1953.

bullshit

[circletimessquare]

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

fine, i don't have a problem with that. remove the staute, go ahead. i don't side with the russians, i side with the estonians, the little guys in this fight

but don't think for a moment think you sit high in your ivory tower completely clean and unlike the act

Re:

[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

exactly

[circletimessquare]

they could have picked a better time to do it

but they didn't

because estonians are proud people

and they have every right to be

look, i am on estonia's side on this issue, but please stop pretending nationalistic pride is only something that fuels the russians. it fuels the estonians as well

well

[circletimessquare]

being that nationalistic pride is a fault of every single country that currently exists and ever has existed, i think you need to readjust your blind spot on the "incorruptibility" of estonia

there is nothing wrong with supporting estonian nationalism in the face of russian nationalism

there is everything wrong thinking estonian nationalism doesn't exist

russians are nationalistic and estonians aren't? bullshit

nationalistic pride is an equal opportunity idiocy, it does not discriminate based on race or religio

shakespeare:

[circletimessquare]

"methinks the lady doth protest too much"

why does the idea bother you so much? why do you have trouble admitting estonian nationalism?

the issue is not that i press nationalism as a motivation over the tallinn statue, the issue is that you fail to admit it

why not just admit that estonian nationalism exists and is part of the motivation?

unless you believe that estonian nationalism doesn't exist, or is in someway beyond reproach

all you have to do is admit it exists as a motivating factor, and i have no argumen

(snicker)

[circletimessquare]

you should be a lawyer. you have a wonderful way of manipulating the words that are written and suddenly deliver a meaning that did not exist in the previous context

and i probably am a dolt. better a dolt than a closet nationalist

i'm not the one who seems to be so so bothered by my insistence on the existence of estonian nationalism

and i need no quote to support that assertion. i merely need to point out your continued existence this deep in this thread

if the idea i am presenting to you didn't bother you, y

i'm certain

[circletimessquare]

a lot of estonians were racist nazi assholes

a lot of germans were too (duh)

but we can talk to germans nowadays without thinking of them as nazis, and i think we can do that with estonians too, right?

however, today, right now, russians are getting rather imperialistic over their little neighbors

do you think the crimes of russia from today are excused by crimes of estonians from yesterday?

tell that

[circletimessquare]

to the russians

ObPrisoner quote

[Demona]

"Russian."

(pointedly) "Estonian."

(smirk) "Russian."

(glare) "_We_ don't think so."

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'

we must not allow a Cyber-War gap ..

[rs232]

General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, we must not allow a Cyber-War gap!

Seriously though, the US should have allowed the commie bastards join NATO when they wanted, instead of creating the ideal conditions for starting WW3.

Oh yeah?

[Colin Smith]

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.

Does this mean that get a ping wrong and it's not simply packets that might be coming back the other way?

 

Re:Oh yeah?

[discord5]

Does this mean that get a ping wrong and it's not simply packets that might be coming back the other way?

That's why in Hunt for Red October, Sean Connery says "ping -c 1 sub.navy.mil" (or simply "One ping only")

That joke worked so well in my head :-(

Re:

[Control Group]

If it helps, I thought it worked pretty well on this end, too.

I don't think, though, that it could have been pulled off verbally.

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.

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:Cut Russia off the net

[Renraku]

Problem is this could be a slippery slope.

So if we cut their IP blocks off from the world beacuse of botnets, what other excuses could we use? Well, China supports terrorism, so lets cut them off too. And both Koreas. And the entire middle east. Etc.

Also, the hackers would end up proxying through another set of IPs and getting to where they need to be anyway. And could write up their bots to do the same.

That said, don't use technical solutions for social problems. The problem is the governments of the countries in question don't care. They can deny involvement but still watch their enemies writhe. It should be treated as if a stream of foreign nationals marched out of their country and into ours, guns drawn. And that their government is doing nothing to stop them.

Re:

[Fred Ferrigno]

Problem is this could be a slippery slope.

So let it slide. If I don't want Russia, China, Korea, etc. to have a route to me, why should they have one? IMO, Estonian banks, businesses, etc. should simply "fork" the Internet so that only trustworthy Estonian ISPs have a route to them. Sure, it costs them something in not being able to do business internationally, but it would guarantee service for their local customers.

Re:

[Ceriel Nosforit]

Also, the hackers would end up proxying through another set of IPs and getting to where they need to be anyway.

Can't proxy anywhere without a route.

Traceroute your connections for a while as you connect over the world and you'll see some reoccurring names. Those are backbone owners, and they make contracts with each other to route traffic through their nets. Say my country fails so bad at keeping me in check online that my entire country gets its routes cut off, I can't connect to the rest of the world beca

Re:

[Renraku]

Intra-continental routing is also full of its own politics.

Playing host to DDOS-bots is one of those 'you just sent troops to shoot up a trailer park' moments and is definately frowned upon. Its like the USPS delivering a thousand or more letters of spam to your house in one day.

Eventually pressure on the USPS would cause them to stop accepting 1000 messages at the same time for EACH ADDRESS IN THE CITY. They should do this. Don't RBL their IPs, but if repetitive traffic like this keeps coming out, throt

What Eastern Block?

[andersh]

..(and other Eastern bloc countries) start taking cybercrime seriously, it should just be cut off the net entirely

The former Eastern Block countries that were under Soviet occupation are now all part of the European Union and NATO. The countries you seek to "cut off" are part of your greatest ally, trade partner(s) and defense alliance!

Neuromancer

[PHAEDRU5]

"Too young to remember the war, aren't you, Case?" Armitage ran a
large hand back through his cropped brown hair. A heavy gold bracelet
flashed on his wrist. "Leningrad, Kiev, Siberia. We invented you in Siberia,
Case."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Screaming Fist, Case. You've heard the name."
"Some kind of run, wasn't it? Tried to burn this Russian nexus
wit

Welcome to the New War...

[jmichaelg]

...same as the Cold War.

Murdering dissidents and instigating unrest in various parts of the world.

The question is how we'll finance our side of the war this time around what with Baby Boomers getting ready to suck the federal tit dry and a feckless Congress that can't stick to a war when the going gets tough.

Re:

[ArchdukeChocula]

Differing from Soviet America how?

Re:

[Opportunist]

Huh? How's the German military intelligence service [wikipedia.org] connected to this?

And yes, I do find the choice of the acronym highly ironic.

Re:

[Andrew Kismet]

"The legal basis for the MAD is the MAD Law of 1990-12-20[1], as amended by Article 8 of the law of 2005-04-22"

It seems some Wikipedia editors have a sense of humour after all...

Re:

[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?

Re:

[Ngarrang]

One could argue that the entire world is in a constant state of cyber-war.

Re:

[mdm-adph]

And what kind of rations do you feed a cyber soldier, anyway? Do we need cyber medics, cyber support units, a cyber mess hall?

An unending supply of coffee and some of those cool amphetamines they give to marines and fighter pilots should do the trick.

Re:

[thousandinone]

And do we really want our tax money buying cyber prostitutes to give our cyber soldiers computer viruses?

Re:

[Opportunist]

And what kind of rations do you feed a cyber soldier, anyway?

High doses of caffeine, of course. Or what kind of person do you think would be a soldier in that war, huh?

Re:

[stonecypher]

lest they end up in a cyber quagmire.

Alllllll right. Giggidy.

Re:

[Foochee]

NATO should tread cautiously on this one, lest they end up in a cyber quagmire. And what kind of rations do you feed a cyber soldier, anyway?

Well isn't it obvious.. unlimited supply of Hot Pockets®

Re:

[multipartmixed]

What?

Paragraph and line number, please. It appears to me as though you've invented your accusation out of whole cloth.

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

[spun]

There's been a sexism troll making the rounds lately.

To stop those trolls 1-2-3
Here's a fresh new way that's trouble free
It's got Paul Anka's guarantee...
(Guarantee void in Tennessee)

Just don't look!
Just don't look!

Re:Common Sense

[LizardKing]

You haven't got a clue.

A DDOS attack is basically an attempt to saturate the capacity of the target. The "distributed" part means that it is difficult to screen out the attackers because the machines are on so many different subnets. The flaws that a DDOS relies on are not in the attacked systems, but in the attacking ones which have been compromised and have had software installed that makes them a "bot". A network of these "bots" are then coordinated by the attacker.

And if you think that shutting down the websites of pretty much every government institution, bank and commercial enterprise in a highly connected country like Estonia amounts to "a few eggs thrown over the fence" then just think what it would do your nations economy.

Re:

[Deanalator]

Rock on, except grandparent is 100% correct, and somehow you got the +5 and he got the -1? Machines these days (even when there is an entire botnet after you) don't have the power to simply "flood" an opponent's pipe. In any DoS or DDoS, you need to find the minimum amount of traffic you need to send out to tax one of the opponents' critical resources (cpu, memory, connect queue, whatever). Often times attackers will take advantage if a flaw in some server code to do this. More often, however, people ju

Re:

[Strange Ranger]

When I worked for a large financial institution "getting websites shut down" would be the least of our worries during a serious DDOS attack (though that is straight from TFA). The folks in the data centers would get a bit testy though. I'm sure it's the same for government institutions as well.

"getting websites shutdown" is straight from the article though.
Does anyone really believe we're talking about websites here?

What do they teach in news reporter school?

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:

[Moridineas]

Wow, that's an incredibly naive point of view.

Always depends on bugs? Well, that's sometimes true, but you make it sound like a piece of cake to eliminate bugs. We've had computers around for a good number of years now, and that hasn't happened yet! Even a project like OpenBSD has had several SEVERE flaws over its lifespan in the core software--not counting flaws in typical addon software. (This is not meant to attack OpenBSD because I think frankly it's the best we've got! I use it on my firewall..)

Not to

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:

[Opportunist]

Computer attacks rely heavily on human mistakes. Security is a minimum game of what the system(s) involved can and what the user(s) in front of them can. And the fun part about defending a computer is that ALL those parts have to be tight. Like defending a castle. Doesn't help jack if one side of your defense is made of solid rock when the other one is made of cardboard.

Deja vu!

[porkThreeWays]

http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16570 2&cid=13822614 [slashdot.org]

Re:

[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.

Re:

[at_slashdot]

One question remains what are Russians doing in Estonia, why don't the go back were they came from?

Cases with Finland and Canada are very different

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

In both Finland and Canada when they became independent, the minorities both Swedish and French had been there for relatively long and they were well integrated to the majority. In Estonia the case is very different, most of the Russians were transported there to colonize the Estonia and transform it to be a part of Russia. In Estonia minority wasn't well integrated to majority, majority was by force tried to integrate to minority.

PS. In Finland there has been much discussion about making Finnish the only

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:

[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

Re:

[Cyberax]

Be careful with your words.

Russia lost 30 millions (yes, millions) of people in WWII - there's no WAY to recover all dead bodies, unfortunately. But there's still about 300 active salvage parties in Russia, they search for remains of dead soldiers, identify them and then rebury with military honors.

Re:

[LizardKing]

Be careful with your words too. While the post you were replying to failed to make the distinction between ordinary Soviet citizens and their leaders (Stalin and his cohorts cared little about the human cost of defeating the Axis powers), you state that 30 million Russians died in WWII. They were not only Russians but citizens from across the Soviet Union. This is why it's less likely that a statue that commerates the sacrifice of the ordinary Soviet soldier would be removed from the centre of somewhere lik

Re:

[Cyberax]

Russians made the biggest part of USSR army. Belorussians, Armenians and some Ukrainians were also referred to as 'Russians' in WWII.

As for monuments... Well, Ukrainian nationalists in L'vov are going to remove Soviet war memorial: http://www.nr2.ru/lvov/118316.html [nr2.ru] (and already removed memorials to a famous Russian WWII spy). Poland also wants to remove all of the USSR memorials.

That's why I think it's important to show to all estonias of this world that Russia does care about war memorials.

BTW, Hungary wa

Re:

[LizardKing]

They were offered Estonian citizenship after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Estonian independence. Many ethnic Russians chose not to take it, but remained in the country.

Re:

[Cyberax]

No, they were not!

They were required to pass Estonian language and history exam. They were NOT granted citizenship automatically.

Re:They forgot something.

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

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.

Let me give you another perspective on this. You can decide whether or not you want to stick to your guns here. Are you by any chance married to a Russian woman? Because if you are, that will certainly inhibit your ability to see the other side.

Estonia was under Russian control until 1918. It remained an independent nation until 1940, when the USSR invaded it. Germany occupied it from 1941 to 1944. During the 1 year or so of Soviet occupation prior to the Nazi invation, the Soviets did such nice things as kill the intellectuals and forcibly conscript Estonians into the Red Army. I can't say it's any wonder that as in Ukraine (where Stalin and his henchmen had killed and starved to death millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s), the locals viewed the Nazis as liberators and then found out that they were just as bad if not worse as the Soviets. Do note that the USA never recognized the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. NEVER. It's important to know that for over 50 years, official US policy was that the occupation of these 3 countries was illegal.

After WWII ended, Estonia was screwed. They were part of the Soviet Union. The Soviets moved hundreds of thousands of Russian speaking immigrants into Estonia in an attempt to "Russify" it and to dilute Estonian nationalism. Estonian freedom fighters fought a small scale guerilla war against the USSR into the early 1950s when they finally gave up and realized it was hopeless.

During the USSR period, Russian was the official language in education. It was possible to have education in whatever the local language was (Krushchev made some changes that allowed this), but there was a catch - if you wanted to get a good job, you absolutely had to speak Russian well. Given that Russian and Estonian are about as closely related as English is to Polish, you might understand that Estonian parents had no choice but to send their kids to Russian language schools so as to give them the best chance to prosper in the USSR.

Cut to 1991 when Estonia gets its independence. They now have a rather large Russian speaking population who they were forced to accept by a government that no longer exist. These people have never assimilated into Estonian society. In fact, they were encouraged immigrate there specifically to dilute Estonia's sense of national identity and to turn them into "good little Soviet subjects". These immigrants have never bothered to learn the Estonian language since Russian was the official language of the government prior to 1991. Now you have all these people who say "Screw you! We want to speak Russian!" in a country where the majority of citizens speak the local language, Estonian. They demand that everything be done in Russian so they can understand it. The Estonians never wanted to speak Russian to begin with, so they are promoting the use of their national language. Now you have about 26% of the population who refuses to "get with the program", demands that their language be given equal footing with the national tongue and even worse, feels that things were a lot better back when they were in charge and the stupid locals were taking orders from them. So given that Estonia never wanted the Soviets/Russians there to begin with and the Soviets weren't exactly enlightened when they ran the show, can you really blame them for not being real happy with Russia today? By the way, ethnic Russians can become Estonian citizens, but they have to take

Well said.

[Viol8]

The russians are very good at telling others what to do but they're not very good at being told themselves and then they start complaining and acting like spoilt school children if they have to do something they don't like (you know , like learning the native language of the country they're living in).

If the russians want to make a big deal out of those statues the estonians moved , perhaps the estonians should ask the russians - where are the statues for the estonians your government deported to siberia??

Re:

[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.

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

Re:

[gorbachev]

Wow, a Russian talking about human rights violations.

Man, my ironymeter just went off the scale.

Re:

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

Eh.. where are you getting this "information"? What you are saying and presenting is just false.

After Estonia became independent all persons who's forefathers had been citizens of Estonia before Soviet occupation were granted automatic citizenship, this group also included Russians that had arrived before the occupation. In 1992 about 32% of peoples in Estonia didn't have any citizenship, these are the people who's forefathers became to the country Russianize the country. As Estonian government didn't want

Re:

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

Considering that at least some large portion of that Russian-speaking percentage of the population represents Russians brought in to fill the empty houses of Estonians shipped off to the gulags never to return, I'd say its rather understandable that official Gov. policy on the subject is, 'citizenship is contingent on moderate cultural integration.'

Also, not really sure why it matters what Russia thinks of Estonia's government. At the very best that's a pot/kettle situation, but more likely its just blatant

Re:

[miscz]

Russians were just another aggressive force during WWII, they've beaten nazis but were not a lot better, eastern Europe still remembers that Red Army troops were the mostly savages that raped, plundered and killed everything they saw. Of course there are exceptions but you can't blame, polish people for renaming Adolf Hitler Platz to the Slavic Frendship Square (example from my hometown) and removing other symbols of occupation, it's not illegal according to internetional law either. 30% of estonian populat

Re:Why Is This In Politics??!!!

[Turn-X Alphonse]

The world does not evolve around America kiddy wink!

The politics section originally started out I believe a year or two ago to cover the election and resulting aftermath of "ZOMG BUSH GOT LESS VOTES!" type story. It has since become a more rounded section and carries stories from all over the world under it's banner, because you know "Stuff that matters" is quite often political.

I mean when people start having wars via the Internet (as this rather implies is happening in some twisted form) it starts to effect us geeks as well. So we discuss it on Slashdot and because it's political based they used the politics banner.

I feel sorry for you if you can't see that the FAQ maybe outdated and this has been this way for a good few months (maybe 12+) now, so decide to grind your axe on a stone that's been here longer than you probably have (Anoncow has no ID so I can't tell from your number, but I have to assume you're new if you don't understand the politics section).

Re:Why Is This In Politics??!!!

[M. Baranczak]

The world does not evolve around America kiddy wink!

Of course not. Real Americans don't believe in evolution.

Re:

[Turn-X Alphonse]

One could argue there is no such thing as an American, only Earthlings.

But just to invalidate your point. America is a continent, to be born there makes you American, the common American-usage is someone from the United states of America. But either way, believing or not believing in Evolution is not something needed for an American passport, nor American citizenship, which would be two very big features of being American.

Re:

[Chris Burke]

Of course not. Real Americans don't believe in evolution.

Which is why unfortunately the GP was wrong, and the world is evolving around America. :)

Re:

[Applekid]

Don't know about you but my address bar shows it.slashdot.org, not politics.slashdot.org. Therefore, the politics tag does not imply that a given story is in the politics section.

Re:

[Lurker2288]

Just watch out for that black ice, man, or you might find yourself with half a face getting shot down in Finland.

Re:

[Darlantan]

Personally, the black ICE doesn't concern me. Slamhounds, on the other hand...

Re:

[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 a

Re:

[mikerich]

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.

I've never heard an apology from the Russians for the 2 years of collusion between Germany and the USSR brought about by the Nazi Soviet Pact, which resulted in the occupation and division of Poland, annexation of the Baltic States and mass deportations to the gulag. Not to mention the endless pr

Re:Man, what a manipulative way of putting things

[miscz]

While I agree with you, there was (and still is) a lot of antisemitism in central/eastern Europe, or at least here in Poland. I bet most of collaboration with nazis came from genuine jew haters. It's easy to blame just some faceless nazi-machine but the truth is, a lot of people are guilty.

Re:

[Cinnamon Whirl]

Lets hope they've upped their defences since then.