Comments on: Cyberattack in Estonia--what it really means

Arbor Networks' Jose Nazario takes stock of the denial-of-service attack against the Baltic nation--and the wider implications.

[n3td3v]

state funded cyber attacks

this is only going to increase over time as rogue governments see the benefit of these atacks and the impact on the population and economy of entire nations.

with the right expertise, you can bring down america in one attack.

you can attack national infrasturcture, from rail traffic control to the stock exchange, and military systems as well as hampering access to government propaganda politcal web sites.

you can cripple everything, put world economy in jepordy and risk human life!!

far too many governments don't invest in cyber security yet, it is actually more damaging than any traditional military action using laser guided bombs against an axis of evil.

as more and more of our lifes become dependant on computers, the more vulnerable we all become to hackers and that threat has to be taken more and more seriously, before al qaeda really pick up on this stuff.

[Phillep_H]

Other groups, as well

Agreed. There have also been a few low profile attacks on critics of two religions. We can expect the number of attacks to increase.

[ghostofitpast]

What are your motives?

Are you guys trying to undertake a serious investigation of the current state of the art of DoS and its possible consequences or just running an unpaid advertisement for Arbor Networks; enquiring minds want to know?

[n3td3v]

motives

"Are you guys trying to undertake a serious investigation of the current state of the art of DoS and its possible consequences or just running an unpaid advertisement for Arbor Networks; enquiring minds want to know?"

its all about ad clicks and rent-a-quotes from credible people within the security industry, its what cnetnews.com lives for.

[westrajc]

More Evidence Of Former USSR Organized Crime

Does anybody now doubt the connection between the former USSR/KGB and the Cyber-mafia they now run? Why/How-else would an entity, angry over the removal of a Soviet-era statue, be engaged in an effort of this magnitude.

Wake up! The former USSR, along with China pose a significant threat to the West. Whether it's cyber attacks or contaminated (poisoned) food (bio-warfare), our enemies/adversaries are capable, cunning and would like nothing better than to see the West "fall."

[pjianwei]

typical war monger.

Maybe "bomb bomb iran" is on your playlist 24/7.

[technewsjunkie]

How many PCs (knowing participants) are necesssary??

I guess i on;t understand this fully. I can see a "small" group of
techies doing this, but doesn't it take a sizeable number of PCs to
do any harm? Or are these zombies, unknown usage by their
users??

Can someone elaborate?
Thanks.

[vitg123]

isn't this funny? or the problem is more serious?

I believe that the problem is much more serious than the state
funded attack. The modern Internet technologies and broadly
deployed Windows allow a small group of people to arrange a
cyberattack without any significant efforts: its very easy to
distribute viruses without any visible damaging functions to
setup a botnet for DDoS attacks. It will be activated only on
special occations:-) Several smart russian people who
emotionally binded to these events in Estonia may have arranged
such attack very easily. Taking into account that here in Russia
people consider this step of Estonian government almost equal
to eulogy Nazis and widespread hate of faschism, I believe that
regular people who work in regular companies as programmers
and sysadmins have arranged this, just because they hate Nazis
and they simply don't understand these steps of Estonian
government. BTW, in Russia supermarket chains who sell chese
made in baltic countries tried even to change country of origing
on labels because people refused to buy chese from these Baltic
republics. I don't think that Europeans or Americans may
understand this. This looks strange as for all russians may look
weird believes of young americans that WW2 was won by
American and Britan coaltion. Here we know how many our
soldiers have been killed in fierce fights on the eastern front not
from historical books, but from our families' stories -- in every
russian family we have grandfathers who fought and either have
been killed or hurt.

In any case the windows have become the great platform for
botnets:-) You don't have to be a rocket scientist to have your
own botnet and put down some government's internet
infrastructure. And you even don't need state funding to do this
-- just your regular salary.