Link: Threat Level - Wired Blogs.
https://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-09/ff_estonia
https://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-09/ff_estonia
Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe
By Joshua Davis 08.21.07 | 2:00 AM
"The minister of defense checked the Web page again — still nothing. He stared at the error message: For some reason, the site for Estonia's leading newspaper, the Postimees, wasn't responding. Jaak Aaviksoo attempted to pull up the sites of a couple of other papers. They were all down.
"The former director of the University of Tartu Institute of Experimental Physics and Technology d been the Estonian defense minister for only four weeks. He hadn't even changed the art on the walls.
An aide rushed in with a report. It wasn't just the newspapers. The leading bank was under siege. Government communications were going down. An enemy had invaded and was assaulting dozens of targets.
Outside, everything was quiet. The border guards had reported no incursions, and Estonian airspace had not been violated. The aide explained what was going on: They were under attack by a rogue computer network.
It is known as a botnet, and it had slipped into the country through its least protected border — the Internet....
http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2007/08/your-point-of-view-requested.html
http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2007/08/your-point-of-view-requested.html
"Question : What is the most realistic scenario on what exactly happened in the recent DDoS attacks aimed at Estonia, from your point of view?
"- It was a Russian government-sponsored hacktivism, or shall we say a government-tolerated one
"- Too much media hype over a sustained ICMP flood, given the publicly obtained statistics of the network traffic
"- Certain individuals of the collectivist Russian society, botnet masters for instance, were automatically recruited based on a nationalism sentiments so that they basically forwarded some of their bandwidth to key web servers
"- In order to generate more noise, DIY DoS tools were distributed to the masses so that no one would ever know who's really behind the attacks
"- Don't know who did it, but I can assure you my kid was playing !synflood at that time
"- Offended by the not so well coordinated removal of the Soviet statue, Russian oligarchs felt the need to send back a signal but naturally lacking any DDoS capabilities, basically outsourced the DDoS attacks
"- A foreign intelligence agency twisting the reality and engineering cyber warfare tensions did it, while taking advantage of the momentum and the overall public perception that noone else but the affected Russia could be behind the attacks
"- I hate scenario building, reminds me of my academic years, however, yours are pretty good which doesn't necessarily mean I actually care who did it, and pssst - it's not cyberwar, as in cyberwar you have two parties with virtual engagement points, in this case it was bandwidth domination by whoever did it over the other. A virtual shock and awe
"- I stopped following the news story by the time every reporter dubbed it the first cyber war, and started following it again when the word hacktivism started gaining popularity. So, hacktivists did it to virtually state their political preferences..."
