WW1 (Web War One) - eStonia Attacked!
Like many of my blog readers I suspect that the recent story about Estonia being shut of the grid passed with a fleeting interest. Over the years I think I have been jaded by sensationalist journalism about cyber jihads and the Internets impending doom from cybervillans.
I just picked up a copy of Wired at the airport and among the usual great articles is a story about the origins of the attacks. It seems that after 18 years of independence, the Estonian government decided to remove a statue installed by the Russians after the second world war celebrating driving the Germans from the area. After the war the Russians had banished many Estonians to Siberia and the statue represented a painful period in the countries history for a large proportion of the residents. The Russian government had warned of “consequences” and within days of the statue being replanted in a suburban cemetery the countries core infrastructure was attacked with DDoS. Bot nets from all over the world were re-hydrated and effectively shut off the most wired country in Europe from the grid. The sheer reality of bot net herders who hire out their botnets to spammers and scammers and governments attacking countries is the stuff of yesterdays science fiction.
I saw a great quote recently that went along the lines of ;
Today’s fiction is tomorrows reality
August 29, 2007 at 1:18 pm
When I was in language school learning Russian (ca 1992), there was a protest at the Russian embassy in one of the Baltics for Stalin’s birthday. My teachers couldn’t understand why they would protest at the Russian embassy since Stalin was Georgian. =)
August 30, 2007 at 3:01 am
So was the story any good? I heard that John Robb contributed to it, but I haven’t seen it on his blog yet. I can see what e-Stonia would be of particular interest to him, seeing that his book is all about ‘brave new war’ - or how open source development has influenced guerilla fighting.
Sadly most infosec people see information warfare too much as a hacking contest and much less as an extension of the current generation warfare (4GW+) or brand new generation (5GW) and thus leave either military strategists to see what IT does, draw conclusions, and sell it back to the IT folks.
Failure to see the forest for the trees?