Estonian Central Council in Canada - LL

Yes the cyber attacks were ours.

Moscow has finally fessed up. After continuous denial, Moscow recently admitted that the cyber warfare launched against Estonia in April/May 2007 actually originated in Russia.

There’s one caveat – it’s the Kremlin-minded youth movement, the Naši movement that has taken responsibility for initiating a new warfare tool. For observers it’s hard to discern whether the Naši group has been officially designated as fall guys or whether other better trained and focused agencies actually carried out Kremlin orders. The Naši “komissar” Konstantin Goloskokov has stressed that the operation was not a cyber attack but a cyber defense tactic.

Following the relocation of a Soviet statue by the Estonian government, Estonian governmental and private websites and servers suffered under a full-press internet attack. It was the first time that a NATO member had been targeted by such an intense offensive without anyone admitting to the assault.

Goloskokov that the cyber attacks were not illegal. They had just “visited certain websites continuously until they stopped working.” They directed visits to these websites until the sites themselves jammed up. Computers in Hungary, Germany, South Korea and other localities were used, he said. He denied getting any compensation from anyone for conducting these “website visits”.

He and a few friends were visiting the Russian occupied region of Transdnistra in Moldova when he heard about the relocation of the monument. (That area has been occupied by Russian forces and is being actively Russified through the issuance of Russian passports to locals. Moldovans are essentially Rumanians by ethnicity.)

The British internet news source, The Register, has said that Russian Duma member Sergei Markov claims that his assistant organized the cyber attacks from a non-recognized republic and that his assistant did it on his own initiative.

This rush to admit culpability two years after the attacks can be explained simply: Russia must satisfy its need for attention. General Johannes Kert, former commander of the Estonian defense forces, has commented that admittances such as these should be taken seriously. They have reached the international media. A legal assistance agreement is in force between Estonia and Russia, and Russia, upon request should make these individuals accountable for their illegal actions.

Kert added that an investigation of the attacks has uncovered that certain aspects of the offensive were spontaneous in nature, but other phases were well planned, organized and executed.

Experts have claimed that computers from 178 different countries were involved in the offensive with intensity ranging from 100 megabytes to 40 gigabytes per second.

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