Cyberwar!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6665145.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2081438,00.html
As you might have read, Estonia removed a statue of a Russian solider in its main square in Tallinn. To the Estonians, the statue symbolized the nasty days of communism. The Russians claim it symbolized the Russian victory in WWII. About a third of Estonia is ethnic Russians, and after the statue’s removal, they took to the streets and protested. The Russian government also expressed strong disapproval.
Today, Estonia is under massive cyber assault from Russian hackers. Major websites of government ministries, political parties, newspapers, banks, and companies are under assault. Two Estonian banks have shut down their websites. Estonia has formally asked NATO for help and is pushing the EU for a cyberwar protocol to handle offending nations since Estonia believes the Russian government quietly endorsed this effort. The main attack objective has been denial of service attacks.
Some lessons:
-Fortify should open a sales office in Estonia ASAP.
-This episode illustrates how hacking works: professional hackers did a lot of the work and then publicly posted attack methods and targets. Soon, hobbyist followed their lead. The result? Estonia claims that 1 million separate computers have been used in the attack, most from .ru domains.
-Estonians are highly respected for their super technical acumen. They were caught blindsided.
A funny thing to note is this part is something my Fortify colleague Erik C pointed out:
"We identified in the initial attacks IP numbers from the Russian governmental offices," Aaviksoo [an Estonian government official] said, referring to Internet addresses that can be traced...The Russian government has denied Estonia's accusations. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the attackers must have used a fake Kremlin Internet address to tarnish Russian authorities.
You can’t fake your IP address anymore on internet networks. Mr. Peskov is basically stating something akin to "Even though you have video of us attacking you, it wasn’t us!!"
