digg

Facebook Connect Join Digg About

The First Cyberwar? Groundzero: Estonia

nytimes.com — The attackers used a giant network of bots, perhaps as many as 1 million computers in places as far away as the U.S. and Vietnam — to amplify the impact of their assault. In a sign of their financial resources, there is evidence that they rented time on other so-called botnets. The 10 largest assaults blasted streams of 90 Mbit/s for 10 hours each

Who dugg this? Made popular May 31, 2007

Digg DudeWhat is Digg?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as submitted and voted on by the community. Take the Tour to learn more.

67 Comments

show profanity settings
expand all
  • EntropyMan, on 10/11/2007, -1/+39I am, as we speak, torturing my PC to see if it has any knowledge of impending attacks.

    /they all look alike to me, fscking computers.
  • godfly, on 10/11/2007, -0/+37i'd put on my robe...
  • mwsherman, on 10/11/2007, -2/+31I know there are plenty of high level sysadmins on Digg. What would you do if your organization was attacked like this? Any hot tips? How do you feel about the Estonian government's response? Are attacks like this at all blockable?
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -3/+26@zwarren69

    I guess the reason I added the title 1st cyberwar, is because it's the 1st out in the open firefight between two countries. Estonia was expecting this attack and it actually crippled the country. Other countries have sniped at each other, but nothing on this scale. China hasn't crippled banking in the U.S. for hours.
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+21I'm sorry sir, but that's not a hair related question.
  • xaviel, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2190 Mbit/s is nothing. I saw botnets driving 3 Gig/s of DDoS on certain servers.
  • SpaceDreamer, on 10/11/2007, -9/+30the russians' aggressive behaviour proves that they were right to remove the statue in the first place.
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+18@gooddoggytreat

    "A DDoS attack? You call that a war?"

    You'd call it a war if some foreign country launched a very high bandwidth DDoS attack on all of our military and high level commercial infrastructure assets.
  • duke_nate, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1890Mbps attacks.

    All you can do is get 100Mbps Pipes with a whole lot of redundancy, or cut off china's internet. =)
  • ZWarren69, on 10/11/2007, -6/+23China has hacked numerous American based companies, banks, and federal agencies. Just throwing it out there.
  • digitalmadman, on 10/11/2007, -3/+19We are talking about hacking here or hyping a story? This (if memory serves) would be the largest DDoS attack ever. Not by volume but by infrastructure. It seems to me the goal here was not hacking, (as only one server was defaced, i.e. cracking) but to bring down the infrastructure. The article clearly states that a packet was sent to see what the network could take and the attack was adjusted accordingly. So is it really hacking? But it does fit the idea of war... (in the essence you cripple your enemy). I think this maybe more hype than cyberwar

    But seriously guys.... Did you see who wrote this article??? John Markoff .... name ring a bell? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Markoff). You may remember him as the author of the (in)famous Kevin Mitnick article. So I take this with a grain of salt about as large as my car.

    I do think this was a bad DDoS attack... but serously not a cyberwar.... just like Mitnick was not the most dangerous hacker ever... consider the source, and consider the author... /rant
  • gamche, on 10/11/2007, -1/+13Do we counter attack with digg?
  • brklynmark, on 10/11/2007, -1/+13God help the guys that pull off a DDoS of this scale on the US. I can imagine dumbfounded, blank stare on Bush's face already. ("Sir...well basically...the computers aren't working. No, this is important.")

    Then he would give a speech involving all computer users being terrorists, with some made up words thrown in for good measure.
  • josegutz, on 10/11/2007, -5/+16beware of the fembots!
  • matude, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11I live in Estonia and I'm not surprised at all.

    Soviet Union = Russia.. all the other countries that were part of the union have pretty much nothing to do with that kind of 'soviet' behavior.
    And Russia is still the same. They actually made soviet union anthem and flag official again. Here's one photo of their Victory Day, on 9th May http://www.epl.ee/pic.php?suurus=s&file=165116 .
    They still arrest people who want normal democracy without Putin and they still murder people who dare to criticize the government (1 female journalists for example, was lately on digg as well, not to mention A. Litvinenko).

    It's all the same mate... all the same..

    And about the attack.. Well.. define war. It was pretty annoying and it did affect most of the local internet network.
    And I really think he miscalculated 90 mbits/s because internet business here is pretty advanced and it wouldn't have been affected so much if the attack wasn't anything larger.
  • leetdood, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9It's amazing how many 4chan references there are on Digg.
  • Matteos, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10DIGG ARMY!!!
  • xeno439, on 10/11/2007, -2/+11This is not really about hacking, its about bombarding bandwidth and clogging up servers to cause damage. It's like the digg effect times a million.
    That was a riveting read. Makes me feel proud to live in the 21st century.
  • PeppermintPig, on 10/11/2007, -3/+8"Moscow had offered no help in tracking down people who the Estonian government believes may be involved."
    I see...

    Estonia is a country with a great deal of promise in terms of liberty. It's both revealing and disappointing to see the power of such abuse on a nation of its size. But I think they can learn and grow from this experience, assuming their infrastructure isn't outright attacked in the future. It's something for people in the US to keep an eye on.
  • joshua5, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5"In one of the first strikes, a flood of junk messages was thrown at the e-mail server of the Parliament, shutting it down. In another, hackers broke into the Web site of the Reform Party, posting a fake letter of apology from the prime minister, Andrus Ansip, for ordering the removal of the highly symbolic statue.

    The bulk of the cyberassaults used a technique known as a distributed denial-of-service attack. By bombarding the country’s Web sites with data, attackers can clog not only the country’s servers, but also its routers and switches, the specialized devices that direct traffic on the network."

    *yawn*

    thats it, thats the big cyber war? call me when something is detonated remotely
  • kungfujedis, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5At 90 megabits/s it would take 50 seconds to download XP, not 6 like the author says. He must have done his math with 90 megabytes/s, which is entirely different.
  • arunforce, on 10/11/2007, -6/+10Jack Balmer? "Ok."
  • nevesis, on 10/11/2007, -1/+590Mb/s is nothing. Even 90MB/s is considered pretty weak by current script kiddie standards.

    I remember EFnet servers getting hit with excess of 3Gb/s, for days on end, and that was FOUR years ago!

    And it would actually take about a minute to download XP at 90Mb/s.

    Buried as lame -- reporter is an idiot.
  • Pseudorious, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Given the style of the attack, and as the article states, it is more likely that it's just a bunch of hackers leveraging (wasting) their botnets. I doubt the Russian government was directly involved as their implicated computers are probably zombies as well, but I'm sure they won't do anything to stop it.
  • cheesegrits, on 10/11/2007, -4/+8Speaking as a U.S. citizen, I had really hoped the Soviet Union would turn out differently. The Russian behavior, both official and unofficial, is disappointing. But perhaps I have been expecting too much of a nation with traditions of bad behavior?
    I realize the U.S.A has not been on its best behavior the last few years, so I cannot throw any stones while living in a glass house.
    And i can imagine how much worse it may have been if it had been an "official" cyberwar instead of an unofficial one.
  • nevesis, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Are they pulling an image off a website, en masse? (that's a popular one)

    Is it a flood of SYN packets?

    How many hosts are sending?

    Is it directed at an IP range, a single IP, or a domain?

    What's the connectivity of the upstream?

    Generally the easiest answer is to null route the target for a while... but basically there are a whole host of things to be considered.

    DoSing is no longer sending an ICMP unreachable (click nuke, anyone?) packet, or a bunch of ICMP echo/pings.
  • N8Tron, on 10/11/2007, -3/+6agreed
  • zachblume, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4And then bomb some random country with no connection to the actual attack.
  • tauntz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Well they didn't attack one IP adress that you could just shut down or re-route. They attacked most of the online-news sites, many government sites, most bank websites etc.
  • BabyWookie, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5Some pissed off under-aged Russian script kiddies DOSing Estonia = "Cyberwar"? The Estonians are blowing this ***** out of proportion and blaming the Russian government in order to evoke sympathy from the West. How sad.
  • squegie, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3You mean Elbonia?
  • rouslan, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Wow I was expecting several thousand angry comments, but I guess there aren't many Russians on Digg.
    Just look at this!: http://englishrussia.com/?p=878#comments http://englishrussia.com/?p=885#comments
    This is what Russians did afterwards-raided and stole from the nearby shops (pics): http://englishrussia.com/?p=910
  • Blaatmeister, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3How else would Digg users get their pr0n?
  • stone433, on 10/11/2007, -3/+5This story has been out for some time and from many different sources. read these if you don't like the author.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/21/AR2007052101436.html
    http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9163598
  • henrik.falk, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3There are companies that specializes in filtering away botnet attacks. I imagine filtering away those clients that constantly hammer the server would do the trick. If the attack is directed towards the IP, just change the IP of the server and redirect the DNS entry.
  • iXam, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4Move the services to a colo in the states or UK and then se if they dare to DDOS them ;)
  • sgglynn, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3I could go for some Tomeato right about now
  • rouslan, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4Actually part of it came from the Russian government, as stated from the article. The Russian Federation has done this before to the servers in PRQ hosting (same host of the piratebay) because of a Chechen liberal news site, but instead of Ddos'ing they hired hackers to deface the website.
    Pay more attention to politics instead of script kiddies. The Russian government is known to be corrupt.

    BTW aren't you that pro-Russian guy who I argued with before?
  • Grolsch, on 10/11/2007, -6/+7Perhaps Statue of Liberty should be removed and lets see your aggression.
  • walkerj, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I have an article with a brief background of the statue issue on my blog (not spam 'cause it's related) if anyone wants to know more. It has links to other resources.
    http://history.joewalker.org/2007/05/01/should-a-soviet-war-memorial-in-estonia-be-moved/
  • nOOBert, on 10/11/2007, -1/+290mbit/s is *****. I have had personal servers get hit by 10gbit/s attacks. Plus DDoS attacks are pretty easy to stop or filter out. My ISP when I would be DDoS would either null rout the incoming traffic or just take my IP offline for a while. Neither are a big deal...
  • simplejoe79, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Denial-of-service attack. Cyber security at its best!!
  • chancefl, on 08/09/2008, -0/+1Estonian singles here http://www.loveawake.com/free-online-dating/Estoni ...
  • cokiles, on 12/08/2008, -0/+0Pissing Porn Videos http://voyeurpissingsex.sensualwriter.com/ Pissing Porn Videos. ... Teen Peaches dildo and pissing through her pantie · Super sexy pissing threesome · Horny black haired babe dildo and peeing ...
  • BabyWookie, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1"Actually part of it came from the Russian government, as stated from the article."

    So say the Estonians.

    Kavkaz Center is not a liberal news site. It's some kind of twisted jihadist tabloid written by one madman using multiple pseudonyms. Even the other jihadists don't take him seriously now. Plus, do you think that the US doesn't have the right to take down Al Qaeda sites too?
  • digitalmadman, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1the reporter is John markoff.... who once labeled Kevin mitnick as the fbi most wanted computer hacker...

    so yeah...he is an idiot
  • matude, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660222215,00.html
    "By his account, 4 million packets of data per second, every second for 24 hours, bombarded a host of targets that day."

    http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070518/tpl-uk-estonia-cyberwar-553508c.html
    "Some sites faced up to 1,000 clicks a second" - for days..

    The reporter, John Markoff, is an idiot but I still can't find any better link about actual amount of data that was streamed.
  • gasoline, on 10/11/2007, -3/+3"Perhaps Statue of Liberty should be removed and lets see your aggression."

    ***** comparison.
    It's more like German minority in France looting after French authorities decide to move a statue in the center of Paris heroizing the German soldier and his "liberation". The only difference is - there's no such statue in Paris. Something like that would be unthinkable. Come on, the French don't even allow using authentic German flags when shooting movies in public.
  • Fetching more discussions...
    Show 51 - 69 of 69 discussions

  • Add a Comment

    Login or register to comment!
    Or, sign-in super fast with your Facebook account ...


© Digg Inc. 2009 — Content created and posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain | Terms of Use Updated | Privacy Policy
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.