The Guardian reports that Russia is accused of unleashing a cyberwar against Estonia, with the intention of disabling financial, media and government sites.
While Russia and Estonia are embroiled in their worst dispute since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a row that erupted at the end of last month over the Estonians’ removal of the Bronze Soldier Soviet war memorial in central Tallinn, the country has been subjected to a barrage of cyber warfare, disabling the websites of government ministries, political parties, newspapers, banks, and companies.
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If it were established that Russia is behind the attacks, it would be the first known case of one state targeting another by cyber-warfare.
While Putin’s government practices have been under scrutiny, a Slashdot post comparing it to the aftermath of the Hainan Island Incident might be more along the right tracks.
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
Even if this is not the first documented case of cyber-warfare, I’m sure that will not be far behind. In past wars planes have dropped leaflets attempting to dissuade the enemy to fight, and even when not officially at war radio stations have been targeted at countries such as Cuba. On this day, where most things depend on internet access, disabling a countries’ digital institutions and using their own websites for propaganda sounds like just an evolution of past practices.
Found via Slashdot.