Tuesday, June 19, 2007

NATO and the Estonian DDOS attacks.

Defense ministers at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization asked to beef up cybersecurity following last month's attacks on the Web servers and network infrastructure in Estonia.
The concerns surfaced at the annual meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels, Belgium -- a two-day meeting largely dedicated to the controversial topic of deploying missile defense systems in Europe. However, the recent attacks on government Web sites and systems in the northern European country of Estonia became a significant second point of discussion. The attacks began on April 28 (and I reported about it June 3 2007) , following violent clashes between the Estonian police and ethnic Russians in the country over the removal of a Red Army monument that symbolizes the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Soviet Union during World War II, but is also a reminder to Estonians of the more than four decades that the Soviets occupied the nation. While the Estonian government has accused Russia of masterminding the attacks, evidence appears to indicate that bot masters sympathetic to the ethnic Russian cause were responsible. A 19-year-old student was detained and questioned in the case, but not charged yet. It's interesting to see this evolution as I expect that there will be a change in NATO's behaviour in such cases in the future.