Stories are circulating about Estonian cyberwarfare. It seems that a botnet attack took down some Estonian sites, with incidental damage to local routers and backbone, and lasting nearly a month.
Considering Estonia is more advanced than most of us (they even held the last elections online) the impact of the attack was significant with some down-time for the banks, government sites, etc. It could
have been more serious, but while their Internet infrastructure as a quiet country was not prepared for such an attack, the response and mitigation worked for them. They stood the risk of losing their ability to buy gas, for example, and for a short time, they did.
It was serious enough that Talinn is asking Moscow for help.
Hysteria followed, reaching as far as invoking NATO intervention. Bruce Sterling catches this fine example of fear rhetoric, hurled parodically quite high:
Cyber-Terrorism!
Havoc!
We're ready with an official info-war flack jacket (it's made of tin foil and old cat-5 cable) for the first news outlet to use our term: Cybarmageddon!
It's also worth noting the odd echoes of Soviet-era Baltic occupation in this. Unless the Russian government wasn't involved, and it was some sort of terrorism. Shadows upon shadows, memories piled above mysteries.
(via Siberian Light, Sara Hebert)
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