Cyber Assaults on Estonia: Virtual War?

TALLINN, Estonia, May 18 — This small Baltic country, one of the most wired societies in Europe, has been subject in recent weeks to massive and coordinated cyber attacks on Web sites of the government, banks, telecommunications companies, Internet service providers and news organizations, according to Estonian and foreign officials here. Computer security specialists here call it an unprecedented assault on the public and private electronic infrastructure of a state. They say it is originating in Russia, which is angry over Estonia’s recent relocation of a Soviet war memorial. Russian officials deny any government involvement. This from an article on the Washington Post.

Well, well, and now we have virtual wars. But wasn’t it bound to happen? As the internet gets more and more important, we get more and more dependent on it. Naturally, that makes us vulnerable. So as governments, and countries, get more ‘wired’ they would be prudent to expect some form of cyber assault (e-aggression?) from those who do not agree with them. They should, therefore, guard against such assaults. It seems everything is going virtual, even war.

Is Russia really behind the assaults on Estonia? Even those who know just a little about how the internet operates know that it is very easy for experienced crackers to hide the origin of their attacks. Maybe Russia really is behind these attacks, or maybe someone wants to make it look like Russia is assaulting Estonia. No one should be too quick to judge. Remember how our own Standard Newspapers was owned, used, and abused?

What do you think of all this?

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Comments

  1. I’ve always throught that ARPANET (predecessor of the global Internet) was designed so that a whole region could not be crippled “back to the Stone Age.” Even Wikipedia says that “The ARPANET and nuclear attacks” rumor is not true. Yet we’ve come to rely on the Internet for a lot of daily activities.

  2. lol, so it was all for war? It’s kinda funny, we went almost full circle by using something that may have been created for war for civillian purposes then graduating to using it for war.

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