Estonia hit by "Moscow cyber war"

[Theobald]

Estonia hit by "Moscow cyber war"

Estonia says the country's websites have been under heavy attack for the past three weeks, blaming Russia for playing a part in the cyber warfare.

Many of the attacks have come from Russia and are being hosted by Russian state computer servers, Tallinn says. Moscow denies any involvement.

Estonia says the attacks began after it moved a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn. The move was condemned by the Kremlin.

A Nato spokesman said the organisation was giving Estonia technical help.

"In the 21st century it's not just about tanks and artillery," Nato spokesman James Appathurai told BBC News.

"We have sent one of our experts at the request of the Estonian authorities to help them in their defence."

'Paperless government'

Estonia wants to put the issue at the top of Friday's EU-Russia summit agenda.

The head of IT security at Estonia's defence ministry, Mikhail Tammet, told BBC News that the attacks had affected a range of government websites, including those of the parliament and governmental institutions.

He said the country was particularly vulnerable as much of its government was run online.

"Estonia depends largely on the internet. We have e-government, government is so-called paperless... all the bank services are on the internet. We even elect our parliament via the internet," Mr Tammet said.

The memorial's removal also triggered riots amongst mostly ethnic Russian living in Estonia, during which one person was killed and more than 150 injured.

Estonians say the memorial symbolised Soviet occupation of the Baltic state. Russians say it is a tribute to those who fought the Nazis.

Spam avalanche

The Estonian government says its state and commercial websites - including a number of banks - are being bombarded by mass requests for information - overwhelming their computer servers.

Targets of the so-called denial-of-service attacks have also included the Estonian foreign and defence ministries and leading newspapers and banks.

In some cases, officials have simply blocked access to the servers from outside Estonia, to prevent them from being attacked.

"A couple weeks ago when the whole thing started we had some problems in our online services and then our mail server was absolutely inundated with spam e-mails as well," Estonian journalist Aet Suvari told the BBC.

"In the past few weeks it has been quite difficult for some government officials to read their e-mails on the web, to get access to the banks."

The defence ministry says that the cyber attacks come from all over the world, but some have been hosted by Russian state servers.

It says that instructions on how to carry out cyber warfare are circulating in Russian on Russian websites.

Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip has directly accused Russia of being responsible, pointing the blame at the Russian government.

Nato and EU internet experts are all helping to track down the culprits, but Estonian officials say that they have had no co-operation from Russia.

'Internet pioneer'

While technical experts say that the initial wave of attacks came from official structures in Russia, they now say it might be very difficult to track the perpetrators down, the BBC's Steven Eke says.

He says that experts point out that botnets - the term given to the groups of computers that mount denial-of-service attacks - can be located across several countries, or even continents.

Russia - which has a large community of hackers and computer virus-writers - has been accused of mounting such attacks before in the US and Ukraine.

Moscow denies any involvement in the internet attacks on Estonia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the BBC that the allegations were "completely untrue".

Source

I'm curious to see what our "lovely" Sektor thinks of this ...

[Theobald]

Some sites were defaced to redirect users to images of Soviet soldiers and quotations from Martin Luther King about resisting "evil".
And hackers who hit the ruling Reform Party's website at the height of the tension on 29 April left a spurious message that the Estonian prime minister and his government were asking forgiveness of Russians and promising to return the statue to its original site.

(...)


While the government in Tallinn has not blamed the Russian authorities directly for the attacks, its foreign ministry has published a list of IP addresses "where the attacks were made from".
The alleged offenders include addresses in the Russian government and presidential administration.

(...)


Anton Nossik, one of the pioneers of the Russian internet, sees no reason to believe in Russian state involvement in the hacking, beyond the fanning of anti-Estonian sentiment.

"Unlike a nuclear or conventional military attack, you do not need a government for such attacks," he told the BBC News website.

"There were anti-Estonian sentiments, fuelled by Russian state propaganda, and the sentiments were voiced in articles, blogs, forums and the press, so it's natural that hackers were part of the sentiment and acted accordingly."
Hackers, he points out, need very little money and can hire servers with high bandwidth in countries as diverse as the US and South Korea.



Source

[Sohni]

Old news from beginning of May, but better late then never

Dmitri, a 19-year old resident of Tallinn and a student of higher technical education, was taken into custody today by the Central Criminal Police in connection with the recent cyber attacks against Estonia.

Dmitri is suspected of computer sabotage and of damaging connections to the computer network (Penal Code §206 and § 207). He actively participated on various Internet forums helping to organise cyber attacks, announced the spokesperson of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Dmitri independently volunteered and supervised other forum users in organizing the so-called DDoS attacks against several Estonian servers. As an Estonian resident, Dmitri had a good overview of the local Internet landscape and had the know-how for choosing targets. He instigated attacks against the web pages of local authorities as well as various political parties.
“Those who believe that they can be completely anonymous on the Internet and do whatever they like are seriously mistaken,” said Public Prosecutor Margus Kurm. “There are many competent specialists with the Estonian Police who are capable of tracking down even the most shrewd hackers”.
Senior Superintendent of the Central Criminal Police, Ivo Kolk, stated that the police has vowed to prosecute, to the full extent of the law, those attacking Estonian servers. “This crime, like any other crime, leaves a trace that will lead us to apprehending the criminals. The Central Criminal Police, in co-operation with specialists of other local authorities and private enterprises, has determined the main channels of anti-Estonian attacks as well as the culprits”.
Criminal proceedings for the apprehension of the organisers of the cyber attacks continue, and the number of suspects may increase. The purpose is to apprehend and prosecute all Estonian residents who have attacked servers themselves or have aided hackers from outside Estonia to do so.
Through international co-operation, Estonia aims to pursue the individuals who perpetrated these cyber crimes and bring them to justice, in accordance with the laws of Estonia.

DELFI: First cyber attacker arrested

Cyber attacks have ceased for now, NATO interest to first full scale cyberwar is high and foreign IT teams are working along with Estonians.
The most severe attacks are over, but the cyberwar with Russia still continues.
Some past major attacks have been detected to come from Russian government institutions in Moscow.