Bush, Estonian president talk cyberattacks
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Blog: After meeting stateside with the leader of the Baltic nation, the president says the recent incidents are an "interesting subject" and admits he has a "lot to learn" about the threats.
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The removal of a Soviet soldierâs statue in Estonia prompted a series of cyber attacks that nearly crippled the countryâs government.
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TALLIN, Estonia, Nov. 27 -- On the eve of the first visit to this tiny Baltic country by a sitting U.S. president, Estonia's new president voiced concern Monday over the poisoning death of a prominent Kremlin critic in London, portraying it as another worrisome signal about the political situation...
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President Bush said on Tuesday the hand of al Qaeda lay behind the sectarian violence racking Iraq, and deflected talk of "civil war." Bush, who made his remarks in Estonia on his way to a NATO summit, has ...Comment
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InfoWorld - Two months after much of Estonia&#39;s online infrastructure was&#160;targeted by an online attack, the U.S government is sending cyberinvestigators to help the Baltic state better understand what happened.
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Local pest rather than international conspiracy Estonia has fined a local man a year's salary for involvement in last April's sustained denial of service attacks against the Baltic nation's critical internet systems.â¦
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A political battle is raging in Russian cyberspace. Opposition parties and independent media say murky forces have committed vast resources to hacking and crippling their Web sites in attacks similar to those that hit tech-savvy Estonia as the Baltic nation sparred with Russia over a Soviet war memorial.
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Experts are warning that last May's cyberattacks against Estonia could be a precursor to larger and more damaging attacks against other nations, including the U.S.
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President Bush [related, bio] says he and Russia&#39;s president ``have some disagreements,&#39;&#39; but that hasn&#39;t ruined their relationship.
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Semi-organized people just as dangerous as botnets In late April, a Russian-speaking blogger upset with recent events in Estonia posted a series of dispatches calling on like-minded people to attack government servers in that country.â¦
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"These attacks came directly from the IP address of the (Russian) president's office"  Estonia will propose at a meeting of European Union justice ministers next week that the bloc consider cyber attacks as "acts of terror", Estonian Justice Minister Rein Lang said Thursday. via Baku Today
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In a series of recent e-mail messages, Fulbright exchange teacher Keely Cope discussed holiday celebrations in Estonia.
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(InfoWorld) - May was not a good month for geeks in Estonia. The tiny Baltic republic weathered aÂ month-long cyberattackÂ that shuttered Internet servers nationwide. At the height of the crisis, people who wanted to use payment cards to buy bread or gas had to wait, as the onslaught crippled Estonia's banks. InvestigatorsÂ traced the attack to RussiansÂ angered by Estonia's decision to relocate the statue of a Red Army soldier erected during the Soviet era. Tensions over the incident led to rumors of Russian state involvement in the cyberattacks. Even if these suppositions are never corroborated, Estonia's experience may be repeated elsewhere. "Estonia shows us how, as we become more networked and more wired, our vulnerabilities increase," says James Mulvenon, the director of the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, a Washington, D.C., think tank. With a population of just over 1.3 million, Estonia is one of the most wired countries on earth. Elections, banking, and point-of-sale systems have largely moved to the Web, so cyberattacks such as the one in May can have a profound effect on its commerce. United States at risk TheÂ United States faces many of the same dangersÂ as Estonia. And with public utilities such as hydro-electric plants and nuclear power plants moving away from proprietary (and more secure) systems toward open-standards-based systems that use common Internet protocols such as TCP/IP to connect to one another, the list of potential targets is increasing. Attacks on U.S. systemsÂ have never been linked directly to state-sponsored cyberwarfare, but in 1999 Chinese hackers took down three U.S. government sites after NATO bombers mistakenly attacked the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Though identifying adversaries in cyberwarfare is difficult, preparing for computer network attacks involves many of the same steps as preparing for other online threats, according to Gregory Garcia, assistant secretary for cybersecurity and telecommunications with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "For our purposes, we really need to focus on reducing our vulnerabilities so those attacks don't happen in the first place," he says. Planning ahead Last November the U.S. Air Force set up a new cyberwarfare group, called the Cyberspace Command, as part of the Eighth Air Force. "The aim is to develop a major command that stands alongside Air Force Space Command and Air Combat Command," says Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne. Though much of the U.S. Department of Defense's cyberplanning is classified, some aspects of its strategy are public knowledge. According to the Washington Post, President George W. Bush signed a secret directive in July 2002 that set down guidelines for determining when and how the United States would attack foreign computer systems. Fifteen months later, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved a 74-page "Information Operations Roadmap" outlining his department's plan to develop cyberwarfare capabilities. The cyberwarfare sections of the plan remain classified, but a March 20, 2007, report prepared by the Congressional Research Service states that the Pentagon has proceeded cautiously with these capabilities, "since a cyber attack could have serious cascading effects, perhaps causing a major disruption to networked civilian systems." The U.S. military decided not to launch a cyberattack in Iraq as part of its 2003 invasion, the report states. Concern that any such attack might have rolled over into civilian networks outside Iraq may have played a part in its decision. Civilian spillover a danger Estonia's situation aptly illustrates this key problem with cyberwarfare, according to Mulvenon, who has tracked cyberskirmishes between attackers in China, Taiwan, and the United States. "None of the cyberwars that I've seen in the last 10 or 15 years has been clean," he says. This characteristic complicates matters for states that engage in cyberwarfare because an attack may reach beyond its original objectives into civilian territories or neighboring countries. Nations must also contend with rogue agents, such as the ones in Russia and China who may have acted without their government's approval. One official who helped coordinate Estonia's response says the attack on Estonia's computer infrastructure amounted to a cyberriot. "In war you have definite targets," says Hillar Aarelaid, manager of Estonia's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). "In a riot you don't care, you're just breaking windows." Aarelaid was struck by the sheer variety of the attacks Estonia endured. Some assailants had simply downloaded software on their home computers that repeatedly sent information requests to Estonian servers, while others had marshaled sophisticated botnet armies. Are civilian attackers part of any nation's cyberwar strategy? Perhaps. "I tend to think that the government views them as useful idiots," Mulvenon says. For now, Mulvenon predicts, fears of unintended consequences -- whether in the form of civilians joining in the fight or of a cascading network failure -- will keep cyberwarfare planners cautious, especially in conflicts with powerful nation-states. But that won't prevent attacks like the ones in Estonia, where civilian irregulars pile on in hopes of serving their nation's interests. .
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Make what you will of repeated cyberattacks against Estonia, CNET News.com's Charles Cooper says. But the lesson will be copied.
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Description: President Bush calls for a halt in the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran. Meeting with Pacific Rim leaders in Santiago, Chile, the president also urged Russia&#39;s President Vladimir Putin to adhere to democratic principles.
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Estonian President Arnold Ruutel has called for recognizing his country's border with Russia.
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STOCKHOLM, Nov 1  - Prime ministers of the five Nordic countries meeting here on Monday said they were worried by a US warning of potential terror attacks in the region, but claimed that security was high enough to ward off the threat.