March 8th, 2009
Russia kinda-sorta owns up to Estonia cyberwar
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.
Adam J. O'Donnell, Ph.D. is an R&D engineer who has focused on computer security since 2000. He currently is the Director of Emerging Technologies at Cloudmark, a messaging security company located in San Francisco. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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