Cyberspace Barrage Preceded Russian Invasion of Georgia.

[eekee 182]

Russia has the best hackers. It was probably just some guy in his parents' apartment who was really really patriotic.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Russia has the best hackers. It was probably just some guy in his parents' apartment who was really really patriotic.

More than one guy actually.

Opinions of experts

According to Linnar Viik, an Estonian Internet guru, particular mission-critical computers, for example the telephone exchanges, were targeted.[citation needed] Although the computer crackers behind the cyberwarfare have not been unveiled, some believed that such efforts exceed the skills of individual activists or even organised crime as they require a co-operation of a state and a large telecom company. [3]

Also a well known Russian hacker Sp0Raw believes that the most efficient online attacks on Estonia could not have been carried out without a blessing of the Russian authorities and that the hackers apparently acted under "recommendations" from parties in higher positions. [9] [10] At the same time he called claims of Estonians regarding direct involvement of Russian government in the attacks [11] "empty words, not supported by technical data". [10]

Mike Witt, deputy director of the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team believes that the attacks were DDoS attacks. The attackers used botnets - global networks of compromised computers, often owned by careless individuals. Some of these could be located in the United States. The size of the cyber attack, while it was certainly significant to the Estonian government, from a technical standpoint is not something we would consider significant in scale, Witt said. He thinks that the United States would be able to defend itself easily against attacks on a similar scale. [12]

Professor James Hendler, former chief scientist at The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency characterised the attacks as "more like a cyber riot than a military attack."[12]

"We don't have directly visible info about sources so we can't confirm or deny that the attacks are coming from the Russian government," Jose Nazario, software and security engineer at Arbor Networks, told internetnews.com. [13] Arbor Networks operated ATLAS threat analysis network, which, the company claimed, could "see" 80% of Internet traffic. Nazario suspected that different groups operating separate distributed botnets were involved in attack.

Experts interviewed by IT security resource SearchSecurity.com "say it's very unlikely this was a case of one government launching a coordinated cyberattack against another": Johannes Ullrich, chief research officer of the Bethesda said "Attributing a distributed denial-of-service attack like this to a government is hard." "It may as well be a group of bot herders showing 'patriotism,' kind of like what we had with Web defacements during the US-China spy-plane crisis [in 2001]." Hillar Aarelaid, chief security officer for Estonia's Computer Emergency Response Team "expressed skepticism that the attacks were from the Russian government, noting that Estonians were also divided on whether it was right to remove the statue". [14]

[edit] Claiming responsibility for the attacks

The Commissar of the Nashi pro-Kremlin youth movement in Moldova and Transnistria, Konstantin Goloskokov (Goloskov in some sources [15]), admitted organizing cyberattacks against Estonian government sites.[9] Goloskokov stressed, however, that he was not carrying out an order from Nashi's leadership and said that a lot of his fellow Nashi members criticized his response as being too harsh.[10]

Like most countries, Estonia does not recognise Transnistria, a secessionist region of Moldova. As an unrecognised nation, Transnistria does not belong to Interpol[16]. Accordingly, no Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty applies. If residents of Transnistria were responsible, the investigation may be severely hampered, and even if the investigation succeeds finding likely suspects, the legal recourse of Estonian authorities may be limited to issuing all-EU arrest warrants for these suspects. Such an act would be largely symbolic.

Head of Russian Military Forecasting Center, Colonel Anatoly Tsyganok appeared to claim Russia was responsible for the attack when he stated: "These attacks have been quite successful, and today the alliance had nothing to oppose Russia's virtual attacks", noting that these attacks did not violate any international agreement.[17]