20-Year-Old Arrested for Estonian Cyber Attacks
Last summer, Estonia's online networks were under attack. Many of the country's governmental Web sites, as well as some that belonged to newspapers and other national media outlets, were shut down by a flood of traffic from surrounding nations. The attacks began after the Estonian government made the controversial decision move a World War II monument to fallen Russian soldiers. During and immediately following the attacks, Russian hackers were quick to be blamed. Now, though, it seems that the instigator of the attacks wasn't Russian, but was instead an Estonian.
The arrested man is 20-year-old Dmitri Galushkevich, a student who is accused of launching the attacks from his home PC. Dmitri, though Estonian, was against his government's plans to move the statue. As a form of protest he used his online connections to launch the attack using computers all over the world. The computers had been compromised with viruses and other malicious software, enabling him to control them remotely and coordinate their attacks, though it's still unclear whether he acted on his own or was part of a team.
So, there are a number of lessons to be learned here, primary among them is the eye-opening possibility for a lone wolf hacker to spark an international incident between two countries with already strained relations. All the more reason, then, to have our military focus a little more on cyberwarfare than the real sort.
From Slashdot Politics and ars technica
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Daniel Gaunt @ Jan 26th 2008 11:38AM
It's amazing how highly sensitive sites can be left open to attacks, people should be fined for letting viruses install on their pc's. i mean it's not difficult to have a firewall and antivirus even if it is a free one
have a look at my blogs:
http://freeextras.blogspot.com/
http://lifeorsomethingnotquitelikeit.blogspot.com/
jerry a. Myers @ Feb 13th 2008 1:41AM
Russia and the United States will find out
soon that the new era of producing data is
no longer hacking. THE extreme and superior
use of the numeral and zero system allow
for Governmental space and defense data
to be produced with out the benefit of
computer hacking.THIS is not dectectable to
stop, yet teen hacking is the big story.
THE new world of producing Government data in space and defense is yet to be
discussed, yet alone fought.