Russian Cyber-attacks

[Robert E. Seastrom]

Andre Kesteloot <andre.kesteloot at verizon.net> writes:

>  Estonian officials say that one of the masterminds of the
>  cyber-campaign, identified from his online name, is connected to
>  the Russian security service. A 19-year-old was arrested in Tallinn
>  at the weekend for his alleged involvement.

My money is on this being a cyber-intifada; individuals or loose
associations of individuals acting on their own initiative, not under
the auspices of anyone's security service.  My money is also on the
Estonian government having sloppy security; the guys from Brussels
should be able to help sort that out to the extent that it can be
sorted.

Disabling web sites by brute force is high profile and makes good news
stories, but subtle changes to data or taking out back-end databases
via privilege escalation is what I'd expect from the pros.

The cyber-warfare guys I've talked to have not appreciated my
characterization of various online monkey shines as cyber-intifada and
the accompanying intimation that a nation-state might not be able to
do appreciably better than the usual cast of jokers does on a daily
basis as a result of IRC-related grudges and skirmishes over control
of C&C nets for spam relay bots.

My $0.02,

                                        ---rob