Thursday, May 17, 2007

Flasher T, via Flickr (CC license) The removal of this Soviet-era statue from Tallinn, Estonia sparked riots. Did it also spark a cyber attack on the Estonian government?

Among the clutter that is my morning inbox (another story to pursue here eventually), I always enjoy looking at the front page of the London Guardian via one of about a dozen e-mail services they call Guardian Unlimited. My friend, Kevin Anderson, is the blogging editor of the Guardian, so it's a good place to look for cutting-edge online journalism.

But it was a story by Ian Traynor, reporting from Brussels for the Guardian Thursday that really caught my attention: "Russia accused of unleashing cyberwar to disable Estonia; Parliament, ministries, banks, media targeted."

In brief from the Guardian: "A three-week wave of massive cyber-attacks on the small Baltic country of Estonia, the first known incidence of such an assault on a state, is causing alarm across the western alliance, with NATO urgently examining the offensive and its implications.

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"While Russia and Estonia are embroiled in their worst dispute since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a row that erupted at the end of last month over the Estonians' removal of the Bronze Soldier Soviet war memorial in central Tallinn, the country has been subjected to a barrage of cyber warfare, disabling the websites of government ministries, political parties, newspapers, banks, and companies.

"NATO has dispatched some of its top cyber-terrorism experts to Tallinn to investigate and to help the Estonians beef up their electronic defenses."

And: "If it were established that Russia is behind the attacks, it would be the first known case of one state targeting another by cyber-warfare."

I have yet to see the story reported in American media, but I'll be looking for followups. The implications of such an attack, while not unheard of, warrant all our attention.

Editor's pondering: What might coverage of a cyber-war look like, especially online?

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