MOSCOW CYBER WAR

Estonia accuses Russia for attacking their websites and taking part in cyber warfare. Attacks are believed to have started by the end of May. Russian authorities deny the accusations held by Estonia. The cyber attacks came from all over the world, but some have been hosted by Russian state servers.

The reason for the attacks is believed to be the move of the Soviet War memorial from Tallinn to Kremlin. Estonians and Russians have conflicting views about the memorial. 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.

NATO spokesman forwards the argument that the organization sent one of their experts to give Estonia technical help in their defense, upon request.

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.

The defense ministry says that instructions on how to carry out cyber warfare are circulating in Russian on Russian websites

According to Mikhail Tammet, the head of IT security of Estonia’s defense ministry, the attacks had affected a range of government websites, including those of the parliament and governmental institutions.

The internet is at the centre of important activities in Estonia, for e.g, an e-government, all bank services are on the internet and even the parliament is also elected via internet. The country was thus particularly vulnerable since the government was run online.

Computer servers were overwhelmed by massive requests for information. The targets of so-called denial-of-service attacks included the Estonian foreign and defense ministries and leading newspapers and banks. Access to the servers from outside Estonia was blocked as a measure of prevention from attacks.

Technical experts now say that it might be very difficult to track the perpetrators down. 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.

Reference : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6665145.stm, visited 18.07.07