Russia kinda-sorta owns up to Estonia cyberwar
Summary: Radio Free Europe is reporting that an official from Putin's party has publicly stated that he orchestrated the 2007 DDoS Attacks on Estonia.The information security and military communities have been speculating for the past two years about who were the primary actors behind the 2007 Estonian DDoS attacks.
Radio Free Europe is reporting that an official from Putin's party has publicly stated that he orchestrated the 2007 DDoS Attacks on Estonia. The information security and military communities have been speculating for the past two years about who were the primary actors behind the 2007 Estonian DDoS attacks. On Friday, Radio Free Europe ran an article stating that Sergei Markov, a deputy from the State Duma and United Russia party member claimed to have directed an assistant to instigate the a civilian-lead cyber war through unofficial channels
This would be akin to my congressperson, Nancy Pelosi, having her assistant troll message boards and 2600 meetings looking for people to DDoS France in 2002 because they wouldn't go along with our Iraq war plans.
If the admission is correct, it means that Russia's DDoS actions were more of a people's militia-type activity rather than a view into their regular military's information warfare capabilities.
Hat tip to SANS for posting the story.
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Talkback
Two things...
2. The alleged admission to the DDoS attacks covered in the story is probably designed to inform Russia's strategic foes about Russian capability in this area. This is quite similar to the anti-satellite tests conducted by China a year and a half ago or so.
I'd say Russia DDoS-ing Estonia is par-for-the-course in the Information Age.
Just because we dont hear...
EVERY country on the planet with an Internet connection is up to the same stuff -- to one degree or another.
RE: Russia kinda-sorta owns up to Estonia cyberwar
Waffa Margus
RE: Russia kinda-sorta owns up to Estonia cyberwar
Wasn't the RBN behind this?
RBN could still be the civilian gunslinger
Wasn't that recent news too...that RBN looks like most them are off the hook in Russia?
LOL- Slanted beep beep
The assistant likely called the local, regional and national Russian police about who had a cyber crimes record or was being watched. Hee hee maybe the assistant called the US embassy about that list of malware and cyber fraud complaints. Then it would be a matter of finding "patriots", people seeking approval, and those open to modest bribes like..."we will see the Russian/US charges dropped if you will produce the following result". Gee the same way the US CIA might approach such a problem if using domestic civilian assets.
I am pretty sure Nancy Pelosi has idea which of her assistants might know how to contact cyber-greeks with a hazy concept of ethics. Everybody tends to know the office geeks and ones who are suspected of talking to radicals/reactionaries (Republicans). Also politicians in Democratic societies tend to maintain someone in order to be able to troll minor demographics for votes with a bit of deniability and well as to tap into dynamics around legislation. Multiple reasons that one of several assistants might even knew where or who to start talking to without going to law enforcement.
Militia vs Formal Military capabilities
To be honest I suspect that most military offensive cyber-warfare is more a game of coordinating and harvesting techniques of the civilian sector. Other than capture and decoding communications and physical brute force destruction via EMP and sabotage that is. A military or military contractor environment really doesn't support radical and cost effective creative thinking for software offense.
But that military/contractor environment does support moderately effective research into reactionary development of countermeasures to specific known attacks and projected attacks along the course of current mainstream hypothetical attacks.
Defensive efforts are where I suspect most national militaries spend most their in-house money and time. Not to say that there aren't a few high powered platforms ready to be loaded with the latest attack software gleaned from civilian. But I suspect that is more for pinpoint shock attacks on lesser targets under cover of more general civilian led assaults.
The dynamic nature of the game favors that approach.
RE: Russia kinda-sorta owns up to Estonia cyberwar
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