Features RSS Feed
15 Comments
Original air date:
10.3.07
Europe's Most Wired Country Under Hacker Attack
Call it the first battle in a new era of cyber-warfare. Earlier this year, the entire country of Estonia was hit with a paralyzing attack on its Internet infrastructure that shut down the websites of government ministries, news organizations and major banks.
The tiny Baltic nation was hammered by a massive wave of what are called distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. In a DDoS attack, hackers use "botnets" - networks of surreptitiously commandeered "zombie" computers - to bombard a target website with bogus requests for information, overwhelming the host computer and forcing the site to shut down. Such attacks hit commercial websites all the time, and have been used for political ends before - but never on such a scale. Estonia is a particularly vulnerable target: It's the most wired country in Europe, one where citizens can do everything from paying parking tickets to voting for Parliament via the Internet.
Who was behind this digital siege? No one knows for sure, but a whole lot of evidence points to Russian nationalists furious at the Estonian government's plans to remove a Soviet war memorial from its honored place in Tallinn, the capital city. They may have been helped by Russian Internet security firms looking to make a point about the need for their services - and maybe even by the Russian government itself.
WIRED Science went to Estonia to find out how the attacks were launched, how they were beaten back - and what it all means for the rest of us. Check out the sidebar links to find out whether the US is vulnerable to a similar attack, what it might cost to rent a botnet if you were so inclined, and to see a timeline of the history of cyber assaults.
15 Posts
+ Add Comment
10.21.07 7:19 AM PDT
Michael Parada
That stinks that Estonia was attacked by a lot of hackers. That means that all the computers are shut down and all their information is going to be missing. Now the Estonians have to get into a fight with the hackers because they stared the whole mess. I hope this mess can be resolved.
11.7.07 6:53 PM PST
Mr. Smith
Watch http://twit.tv/sn97
Security Now 97: Operation Bot Roast - sponsored by Astaro Corp
Hosts: Steve Gibson with Leo Laporte
The FBI says it has uncovered one million computers that are being used by hackers without their owners' knowledge. Today Steve talks about BotNets and the FBI's Operation Bot Roast.
3.6.08 1:48 AM PST
Cygnus
First of all, not all of the services in Estonia were down at the same time - so the whole country was not paralyzed at any time. And the hackers didn't know very well which servers to attack.
Banks and online newspapers were down at times only for two days and then the hackers couldn't do anything more. IT geeks watched over the country for couple of weeks more, but nothing interesting happened.
What I want to say is that this attack was almost nothing. People in the street did not panic and did not need to.
6.10.08 10:02 AM PDT
Komail Mithani
Web 2.0 has allowed people to collaborate with a disregard for boundaries in order to collaborate. But, the Web 2.0 allows hackers to use the same collaboration abilities to cause harm. The Estonia event should be looked by many companies and governments as a case study for future attacks. People should take this event seriously in order to understand what went wrong and how this event may be avoided. Governments need to be thinking about implementing Internet defense strategies in order to prevent hackers from crumbling their networks. Just imagine if you could not access your bank account, view your stocks, or even read about news from across the world. What if the Internet broke? What would we do then?
I keep getting reminded of Die Hard 4 and how a fire scale was implemented to create complete chaos in the US.
4.23.09 9:00 PM PDT
Pharmc694
Very nice site!
4.29.09 8:19 AM PDT
samantha.i
awsome
6.6.09 2:21 AM PDT
Pharme190
Very nice site!
7.8.09 6:46 PM PDT
viagra salg
MS5bjj rwzymokk rpatoxor vpcogphw
7.8.09 6:46 PM PDT
viagra apteekista
2Djpew aoqppsfl xbfuazbv drzawoif
7.9.09 4:29 PM PDT
viagra online
6IaYzb xpmxjkrm tucaystq hizxboze
7.9.09 4:29 PM PDT
viagra ilman reseptiä
tnL0en ndgivsum iliegjaj rhlymglz
7.21.09 7:52 PM PDT
viagra comprar
mCuYqe mljebkvx jybbxyvr ktcyskgy
7.29.09 10:16 AM PDT
online viagra
lQMj2L fggoufab yndgoxec itszuohg
7.29.09 11:36 AM PDT
Pharmd176
Very nice site!
8.26.09 6:32 AM PDT
fgh
hdhf
Post your comment