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DoS Attacks on Estonia Were Launched by Student 184

Posted by Soulskill from the modern-techniques-for-making-people-hate-each-other dept.
As_I_Please alerts us to the fact that a 20-year-old Estonian student has been fined for participating in DoS attacks against various Estonian political and governmental websites last May. The situation was notable because it escalated tensions between Estonia and Russia when the latter was accused of initiating the 'cyber-attack'. Quoting: "The fact that a single student was able to trigger such events is particularly ominous when you consider just how many potential flashpoints exist between various countries all over the world. The DoS attack against Estonia is an excellent example of how a cyberattack carried out by a 20-year-old student in response to real-life events further exacerbated an existing problem between two nations."
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DoS Attacks on Estonia Were Launched by Student More

DoS Attacks on Estonia Were Launched by Student

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  • In Soviet Estonia... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24, 2008 @11:06PM (#22177604)
    Computers launch students... into space like great hero cosmonauts!
    • Who here agrees that this is probably either a) A Putin-backed operation to get the blame off of Russia, or b) A joint effort of factions in the Estonian and Russian governments trying to "put that incident in the past". And/or bribes. I'm sorry, this whole thing is just a little too convenient, considering we're talking about an ex KGB guy who doesn't seem to have ever moved beyond plotting and assassinations.

      • Re:Speaking of Soviet Estonia (Score:4, Insightful)

        by emilper ( 826945 ) on Friday January 25, 2008 @06:16AM (#22179714)

        doesn't seem to have ever moved beyond plotting and assassinations
        have any proof ? I mean proof, not allegations.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rtechie ( 244489 )
          Proof that Putin was involved in the Estonia attacks or proof that Putin plots against and assassinates his opponents?

          Given Putin's other sneaky behavior, it seems reasonable to infer that Putin's government may be involved. And even if he's "innocent", who cares? Russia deserves serious sanctions for Putin's other atrocities, so if this is what gets him, GREAT.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mike2R ( 721965 )
        I'm normally ready to believe most allegations against Putin, but I think we do need a little more evidence in this case - someone credible making the allegation at the very least.

        Your option b) would be my favourite if there is more to this than there appears, but I remain to be convinced.
  • I read this article [news.com] at news.com earlier & am now a little bit stupider. Check out this line:

    The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which some security experts have alternatively called a flash mob or the first-ever cyberwar,


    WTF? A DDOS is a flash mob?

  • In other news... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    it was found that the recent DoS attempt against arstechnica was launched by slashdot users everywhere

  • An exellent example... of what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gnud ( 934243 ) on Thursday January 24, 2008 @11:18PM (#22177696)
    The DoS attack against Estonia is an excellent example of how a cyberattack carried out by a 20-year-old student in response to real-life events further exacerbated an existing problem between two nations.

    Eh. How about the _only_ example?

  • Russia accused... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by unbug ( 1188963 ) on Thursday January 24, 2008 @11:21PM (#22177724)
    So on what basis did Estonia accuse Russia of staging those attacks? This story was picked up all over the world and nobody bothered to check if they actually had anything resembling a proof?

    • Not the first time (Score:5, Insightful)

      by r_jensen11 ( 598210 ) on Thursday January 24, 2008 @11:37PM (#22177860)
      How was it that the United States got involved in Iraq, exactly?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by schnikies79 ( 788746 )
        By Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait.

        Say what you want. Thats where it all started.

        • Re:Not the first time (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Friday January 25, 2008 @12:21AM (#22178150)
          By Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait.

          Say what you want. Thats where it all started.

          I'm sorry, this is slashdot. Please keep the facts out it, would you? Next you're going to cite the fact that it was Bill Clinton's stated policy to see Saddam removed from power, too.

          • Re:Not the first time (Score:4, Interesting)

            by ptbarnett ( 159784 ) on Friday January 25, 2008 @01:28AM (#22178444)

            Next you're going to cite the fact that it was Bill Clinton's stated policy to see Saddam removed from power, too.

            Along with just about everyone else on both sides of the political aisle.

            I've noticed that now there's a "study" about all the lies that the Bush administration told about Iraq, back when almost everyone else was apparently telling the same lies, or at least believing them.

            There's an excerpt on Yahoo News of an interesting interview from "60 Minutes", with the guy that interrogated Saddam after he was captured. According to this interrogator, Saddam said he didn't believe that Bush would actually order the invasion -- he thought that there would be a few days of air strikes, and it would be over. Saddam survived it when Clinton tried that, and Saddam thought he could survive it again. And he admitted that's why he continued to let everyone believe that he had various weapons of mass destruction.

            I always wondered why Saddam behaved like he had something to hide, when he really didn't. I guess he thought the WMD threat would discourage his enemies -- which included most of the Middle East, various Western democracies, and a large percentage of the people in his OWN country.

            • Re:Not the first time (Score:5, Informative)

              by blirp ( 147278 ) on Friday January 25, 2008 @02:15AM (#22178668)
              I've noticed that now there's a "study" about all the lies that the Bush administration told about Iraq, back when almost everyone else was apparently telling the same lies, or at least believing them.

              'Everybody'? I don't know what planet you where on back then, but most people in Europe didn't buy the theory of a link to Al-Qaeda. Most governments of Europe also wanted the weapons inspections to continue instead of invading.
              Personally, I expected an invasion to become the quagmire the current Vice President of USA predicted. And I, along with a lot of people, expected it to only enrich certain oil companies. I even participated in a protest march for this.

              M.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by asc99c ( 938635 )
                Even most people in the countries (country?) who supported USA didn't believe the link - at least in the UK for the people I know. And given the 'Sorry, World' apology from the US, I'd guess the situation was pretty similar even there. But I guess most of us don't get the same sort of say as big oil in these matters.
              • Wonder how they're viewing the documents being released that outline exactly such a relationship?

              • Everybody'? I don't know what planet you where on back then, but most people in Europe didn't buy the theory of a link to Al-Qaeda. Most governments of Europe also wanted the weapons inspections to continue instead of invading.

                I was referring to the existence of WMD, not the link to Al-Qaeda. I also thought the latter was dubious. But in the US, there were very few high-ranking politicians that opposed the former -- including some that are running for President now and are claiming otherwise.

                You have to remember: the "governments of Europe" aren't considered to be credible in US politics, just as I doubt the the US government is respected in European politics.

                Personally, I expected an invasion to become the quagmire the current Vice President of USA predicted.

                So did I. Earlier, someone posted a brief history of the

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by chthon ( 580889 )

              I have a read an explanation over at The Strategy Page [strategypage.com]. For him, it was a bluffing to win at two fronts. Iraq and everything west of it is Arab, at the east you have Iran. Arabs live in fear of the Persians. This dates back more than three thousand year.

              Having his war at the beginning of the eighties with Iran gained him much respect in the Arabic world, because he stood up to them. The bluff with the WMDs was in the same category, it was to scare off the Iranians and give confidence to the Arab world that

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          If you're going to go that far back, just go back a little further when we got involved with entangling alliances in the region and meddling in the affairs of foreign governments. Had we not armed Saddam Hussein, for example, he might not have been strong enough to invade Kuwait. But we had to arm him, because the Shah of Iran, whom we propped up, got toppled by the Ayatollah who came to power by exploiting the dissatisfaction with the corruption of the US backed Shah, and we feared him spreading his power

        • Probably not. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by jd ( 1658 ) <imipakNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Friday January 25, 2008 @01:06AM (#22178356) Homepage Journal
          Before that, the USA was arming Iraq to fight Iran. Some time prior to that, Iraq went through numerous coups, a British invasion, two monarchies and a partridge in a pear tree. Prior to the pear tree, Iraq was owned by the British. Actually, two distinct regions (Basra and Baghdad) were owned by the British. To save on ink, when drawing maps, they called the group "Iraq". Before that was the Ottoman Empire, who - ultimately - can be blamed quite reasonably for most of the current blood-feuds in Europe and the Middle East. Before that were the Mongols, who can be blamed for just about everything else. Before that, the Islamic forces of Khalid ibn al-Walid decimated the area and took it out of Persian control, who in turn invaded before they even became Persians. Nothing like getting ahead of themselves! Some time before that, Alexander the Great made a royal mess of the area. Before that, there were endless wars between the Assyrians, the Akkadians, the Sumerians (who were largely obliterated), assorted other nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes, and whatever culture lived there first of which there is almost no trace left.

          In other words, there is no meaningful "first", unless you want to go back around 10,000 years. Almost everything that happened after that point was in direct retribution to what had happened before. That's one reason it will take a lot of effort to calm the region down - ten thousand years is a long time to build up grdudges and resentments -- and don't think a single one of them has been forgotten.

          Getting back to the main topic, just as an aside, this is why societies can't survive for very long on a diet of paranoia, fear and resentment. Sooner or later, you'll get people who hate each other less than they hate some imagined collective enemy, and the shit will hit the fan at a speed approaching mach 2. I'm surprised that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often - students get an even rawer deal than most, even at the best of times, naturally form into groups, and generally have significant combined intellect and skills. This is probably the worst group to infuriate and should really be the first group to focus on getting support from.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by octal666 ( 668007 )
            Just one thing, Alexander the Great was after the Persians. And I think you forgot Babylon. But yeah, in essence, Iraq is the craddle of civilization, writting was discovered there and probably the first war that deserved that name was also fought there. What a place to invade!
            • Writing was not discovered, it was invented.

            • Alexander the Great was after the Persians.
              Alexander and the Selucid empire that followed him came after the Achaemenid Persians but before the Parthian and Sassanid Persians. The last Persians to rule Iraq were the Islamic Safavid dynasty who lasted well into the 18th century. As for Babylon, it was founded and run by the indigenous people of the area until Cyrus II captured it and the Selucids later emptied it.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by jd ( 1658 )
                Neither the Sumerians nor the Semitic people who founded Babylon were indigenous. The Semitic peoples, who later also founded Ur and other major cities in the area, basically ripped the Sumerians a new one, keeping only the technologies of writing (they borrowed the Sumerian "alphabet"), mythology and some technology, but destroyed pretty much everything else. The Sumerians had been raided for centuries by nomads, some of whom conquered Sumeria for a while, so genetically speaking the Sumerians weren't even

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Azar ( 56604 )
          Well, no, that's not where it all started. Perhaps you are too young to remember but there was something known as the Iran-Iraq War [wikipedia.org] in which the US (among others) supported Iraq against Iran (with Hussein in power) largely to end the conflict and to attempt to bring stability to the region. But our interest in Iraq probably dates back even further to 1958 when the Iraqi army performed a coup d'etat of the government and became friendly with the Soviet Union.

          But if you're talking about modern events only,

    • Re:Russia accused... (Score:4, Informative)

      by tehbunneh ( 1178277 ) on Friday January 25, 2008 @01:44AM (#22178508)
      Maybe if you would knew a bit of that situation you wouldn't say that. Because the one who got caught was also an ethnic Russian. Born in Estonia to Russian parents. And he said he got the idea from various blogs and forum posts which called people to attack Estonian servers. These blogs and forums were in Russian servers. Besides the IP addresses showed the majority of the attacks to be from Russia. The guy in Estonia was just easier to arrest.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by unbug ( 1188963 )

        Maybe if you would knew a bit of that situation you wouldn't say that. Because the one who got caught was also an ethnic Russian. Born in Estonia to Russian parents.

        Ah, I see. This, of course, proves beyond any doubt that he was a sleeper agent planted in Estonia by the KGB. Also, it is a well-known fact that every ethnic Russian is directly controlled by the Russian government anyway.

        And he said he got the idea from various blogs and forum posts which called people to attack Estonian servers. These blogs and forums were in Russian servers.

        Right. It is safe to assume that this entirely non-obvious idea was planted on those blogs by Russian secret services. Only their weird minds could have conceived of something like that.

        Besides the IP addresses showed the majority of the attacks to be from Russia. The guy in Estonia was just easier to arrest.

        I sincerely hope that the valiant Estonian government will ultimately manage to get them all. As a f

        • http://www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/frameset.php?pageid=http%3A//www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/press/300507.php [mi2g.com]

          ...perhaps as many as one million slave computers in places as far away as North America and the Far East -- to amplify the impact of their assault. In a sign of their financial resources, there is evidence that they rented time from trans-national criminal syndicates on Botnets.

          Even more, the Russian secret service didn't need to be involved in it, all they needed to do is accuse the Estonians in a major newspaper and the people who had the knowledge and resources would act themselves.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by unbug ( 1188963 )

            http://www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/frameset.php?pageid=http%3A//www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/press/300507.php

            Who or what is mi2g? What credentials do they have beyond a dubious website?

            Even more, the Russian secret service didn't need to be involved in it, all they needed to do is accuse the Estonians in a major newspaper and the people who had the knowledge and resources would act themselves.

            Are you saying that the terrible Russian attack on Estonia was actually an accusation in a major newspaper? That's all?

            • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

              by tehbunneh ( 1178277 )
              Maybe I could explain this with a Mass Effect analogy. Let's imagine that the Russian media is the Fox Network. Like the Fox Network it has its target demographic which in this case are the Russians, but in Estonia the ethnic Russians follow the Russian media to and almost (i said almost) exclusively. So when someone in Russian media makes a false statement (like the one made by the Fox Network against Mass Effect) the ethnic Russians are more likely to listen to that information. For instance, the protest
    • Now they are trying to back out of an international embarrassment by blaming the geek. Classic...

    • So on what basis did Estonia accuse Russia of staging those attacks?

      Because they did!

      I'm an Estonian and at the time worked ... in affected area (IT department and under fire) :)

      The pressure and agitations have been going on for years, it just was the first successful attempt. The removal of the statue was decided precisely for the reason to lessen the attack ground in the long run.

      Now, the article ...
      * Dmitri Galushkevich is not an Estonian name (just in case anyone wonders).
      * He lived in Estonia and was therefore the only one so far that could be dragged to the courtroom

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by fatphil ( 181876 )
      Estonia accused Russians of staging the attacks. This perpetrator was an ethnic Russian, just like the rioters. Therefore the Estonians were spot on with their accusations. You also seem to be missing the fact that there wasn't just one cyber attack, this was just one of many.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I am an Estonian living in Tallinn so take this as you want.

      Although there is no proof that it was a Kremlin sanctioned attack (see: Politkovskaya) there is little doubt here that it was. But the thing is that when we say it was the Russians who did it, we don't always mean the Kremlin. What we mean is the Russian people, the people who are a bit crazy in their interpretation of history saying that Estonia was "liberated" by the Russians and other nonsense. These are the people who rioted in April. These ar

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ossifer ( 703813 )
      So on what basis did Estonia accuse Russia of staging those attacks?

      Becuase *other* attacks provably originated from IP addresses within a bank allocated to Russian government agencies.

      This *one* conviction does not account for all the pathetic Russian cyberattacks on the entire country of Estonia.
    • The attacks occured in the aftermath of another Estonian/Russian diplomatic incident. A bit of history:

      During WW2, Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union under the Molotov-Ribbintrop pact, which carved up eastern Europe between Stalin and Hitler. Hitler later reneged, and invaded the area assigned to Stalin, taking over the Baltic States (Estonia, Lativa and Lithuania). The Russians later retook Eastern Europe, and re-occupied the Baltics. They didn't leave until the early 90s. Many Russians resettled i

    • It's Estonian government. They spent last twenty years doing nothing but blaming Russia for everything from sky's blue color to water being wet, passing nationalistic laws, celebrating Nazi, telling their sob stories to EU and trying to become better US sycophants than Poland.

  • Not Acting Alone (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mandelbr0t ( 1015855 ) on Thursday January 24, 2008 @11:23PM (#22177752) Journal

    While they may not have found evidence of any other people involved, it's unlikely that a single person could establish a botnet large enough to overwhelm anything on his own. The only answer I can think of is education - botnets exist because the owners of the zombie PCs simply don't recognize that it's a zombie. There is certainly an overall lack of regulation, too. As a domain owner, I see lots of abusive traffic and have absolutely no legal recourse to punish a perpetrator. Responsible network owners often help, but there's so few networks that are responsible that I usually assume they're not, forcing me to do what little I can at my own site to prevent further abuse.

    For the student's part, he was only fined (I couldn't find how much in TFA). Not much deterrent to prevent him from doing it again. No leverage to find out who he was working with. The lack of clear laws in any country makes prosecution of such actions impossible. As a domain owner, I'd like to see civilized countries show some direction toward making prosecution of such activities a reality. Until then, it's "you hack me, I hack you" which is completely counterproductive.

    • Re:Not Acting Alone (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25, 2008 @12:17AM (#22178134)
      While they may not have found evidence of any other people involved, it's unlikely that a single person could establish a botnet large enough to overwhelm anything on his own.

      I disagree. He wouldn't necessarily have to do anything to build a botnet himself, just have access to a C&C network built by someone else. He could gain access by renting the network, or even stumbling on an unprotected C&C server. There's a few out there, believe it or not. So yeah, other people may have created the botnet, but he still could have been acting alone when launching his attack.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by penix1 ( 722987 )
        You mean to tell me there is no way for a network admin to tell when a computer on their network is an infected botnet drone? I claim poppycock on that. Comcast and others for example detect BT networks enough to disrupt them why can't they do the same for the botnets? Oh, their isn't a threat of lawsuit in botnets....I see...

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by dissy ( 172727 )

          You mean to tell me there is no way for a network admin to tell when a computer on their network is an infected botnet drone? I claim poppycock on that. Comcast and others for example detect BT networks enough to disrupt them why can't they do the same for the botnets? Oh, their isn't a threat of lawsuit in botnets....I see...

          I, and anyone familiar with the BT protocol, can describe how to detect the BT protocol.
          Would you mind sharing with us the 'botnet' protocol?
          I realize there is no botnet protocol, but actually hundreds (or thousands) of them, each different, for one type of botnet drone software. These also change, in that new ones are introduced, and old ones updated. I realize that, and hope you see it now too.

          What exact type of traffic are you claiming can be detected?
          The 10 or 20 packets sent once that went towards t

          • If my understanding of Botnets is corrected IRC is heavily involved in the issuing of commands... And considering some of the stuff I used to see on DALnet a few years back... Nasty stuff. Maybe it's time we just get rid of IRC altogether? Is it truly serving a purpose in this day and age?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dissy ( 172727 )

              Maybe it's time we just get rid of IRC altogether? Is it truly serving a purpose in this day and age?
              Yes it is.

              And just to be sure to remove all command channels there could be, you should get rid of irc, aim, hell all IM, email, the web, ftp, and most importaint, have the ISPs block ALL inbound ports, and block all outbound.

              That will solve the problem, but noone will be here to enjoy it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by d0cu ( 1226728 )

      For the student's part, he was only fined (I couldn't find how much in TFA)

      He was fined ~1500$ (same as maximum fine for drunken driving). He wasn't event expelled from uni for that.

      Not much deterrent to prevent him from doing it again

      In one interview he claimed that He felt like the act wasn't really a crime (he didn't kill anybody, did he). He (and many others) did it because many internet sites recommended doing it. Those sites were put up by main organizers of riots. Main organizers themselves are currently prosecuted

  • The War on Cyber-Warfare (Score:5, Interesting)

    by T-Bone_142 ( 917711 ) on Thursday January 24, 2008 @11:25PM (#22177766)
    Is it just me or have there been a lot of stories about "cyber wars", "cyber-attack"... lately (especially on slashdot). Is this going to become the next big thing, "The War on Cyber-Warfare" with new laws contently coming in place to help protect everyone from evil "hacker" teenagers bent on destroying the world, which no doubt will take away even more of the dwindling freedoms the american people still have left?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Shados ( 741919 )
      They should really just be done with it and make a law saying that we'll all live in pods connected to a computer Matrix-like controlling everything, including our mind.

      Save us a hundred years of time wasted on passing laws. We know it will end up there anyway, just do it already.
    • freedoms the american people still have left?

      You know something? The world does does revolve around the american people and their whims.

  • oh come on (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    surely 'wargames' has been translated by now

    Free kevin

  • Obligatory Soviet Russia Jokes Thread (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gazzonyx ( 982402 ) <scott.lovenberg@nOspam.gmail.com> on Thursday January 24, 2008 @11:35PM (#22177846)
    I hereby declare a single thread dedicated to "In Soviet Russia..." jokes; we might as well keep them all together, as there's too much material for them in this story. I'll kick it off.


    In Soviet Russia, you attack Estonia!


    What do you guys got?

    • In Soviet Russia, computers hack YOU!

    • In the U.S.A., you make jokes about a political regime that no longer exists.

      Whoops, did I do it wrong?
    • in Estonia, students hack you!

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by tokul ( 682258 )

      What do you guys got?

      In Russia you always fight people that are not in your weight category.

      In Russia you are the bully.

      Estonia is not fighting Soviet Russia. It is fighting imperial ambitions of Russian Federation. These ambitions are continuously fueled in Russian media. How many jokes Russians have about conflicts with Georgia or Estonia? If you know Russian, find Zadornov new year's show for 2008. Russians occupied independent countries for more than half of century and expect people of those cou

      • Russians occupied independent countries for more than half of century and expect people of those countries to like them
        Kind of like Americans, huh?

    • Re:Obligatory Soviet Russia Jokes Thread (Score:5, Funny)

      by amirulbahr ( 1216502 ) on Friday January 25, 2008 @12:46AM (#22178278)
      In Soviet Russia denial services you!
    • In Soviet Russian, youtakewhatigiveyouandlikeit!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Sawopox ( 18730 )
      In Estonia, the juice weases YOU!

      (Horribly weak Encino Man [imdb.com] reference, I apologize.)
  • Remakes of Hackers and The Net, anyone?
  • Also annoyed kids, maybe? There are a lot more Chinese than Estonians. Maybe it all originates in one little shit-hole village. I don't know.
    http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/17/1936236 [slashdot.org]
    And even if not, maybe national security information doesn't belong on public networks, including the Internet. Just a thought.
  • Not to knock on anyone for being frugal, but they should really upgrade to something more secure than DOS.

  • Headline *very* misleading! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by minimum ( 719615 ) on Friday January 25, 2008 @12:51AM (#22178288)
    Only one kid DDOS'ed goverment and news sites and created that mayhem? Right. So nobody bothers to mention that the student who was arrested had a Russian name - Dmitri Galushkevich ? Sure he may have the citizenship but he's not really Estonian. Just offspring of an immigrant. And he wasn't the only kid around here who helped to DDOS.

    • Re:Headline *very* misleading! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Max_W ( 812974 ) on Friday January 25, 2008 @01:43AM (#22178506)
      Ah yes. National-socialism. A son of an immigrant is not a true citizen. Only particular ethnicity is honored in the National State.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by karolo ( 595531 )
      And that is precisely the attitude that makes me have no sympathy whatsoever for the Estonians. They destroy the graves of the soldiers that kicked the Nazis out and then go around trying to bring back some kind of pure Estonian "Lebensraum". I am well aware of what Stalin did afterwards, and the introduction of Russian people to dilute the Estonian population, but I am also aware of the collaborationist past of the Estonians with the Nazi occupation, so I don't see that the Estonians can really give lesson
  • Plausible Deniability

  • You know what would be funny? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Someone should create a mockumentary where a couple of hackers destroy worldwide economy and bring about the end of civilized life. They should do so using only tools that any hacker would know to be completely inadequate to do the job. Use vim, show screenshots of obfuscated perl scripts (especially variants of "Hello, world!"), and explain the dangerous uses behind commands like `kill|killall`, `dos2unix` (= denial of service 2 US networks integrating x86), mogrify and crash (because they sound menacing),

  • Just as I said (Score:3, Insightful)

    by saikou ( 211301 ) on Friday January 25, 2008 @01:55AM (#22178574) Homepage
    Just as I said when original discussion happened [slashdot.org], Russian government was not responsible. Now, is Pentagon still ready to bomb cyberattackers? If yes, then next student with a grudge will finish off a country or two before we have a chance of intelligent machines or human-made bacteria to kill us all.

  • What A Crock (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Friday January 25, 2008 @02:08AM (#22178638)
    Quote: "The fact that a single student was able to trigger such events is particularly ominous when you consider just how many potential flashpoints exist between various countries..."

    What nonsense. If governments put important messages on such "secure" places as roadside billboards, for example, then they should expect "hacks" like moustaches drawn on them, etc.

    Others are not to blame if the government is clueless. The fact that it was so easy to do is a great indication that the government was in fact clueless. If they want to put something important somewhere and keep it "secure", then they are responsible for taking at least minimal measures to make sure that it is, in fact, secure.

    They are just looking for someone to blame for their own incompetence.
  • It won't be popular here, but I will say it. The greatest risk to stable society is its young men. It's not surprising that Australian first peoples used to put a lot of effort into controlling them, that the Amish let them live outside their society till they get it out of their system, and that other societies have put them into armies under strict discipline. The combination of increasing strength, hormonal confusion, and social pressure makes them volatile and dangerous. Fifty percent of us have been t

    • The greatest risk to stable society is its young men.

      Young unmarried men. People who have a family to worry about are a lot less likely to do something stupid than the ones who don't, and of course it also helps to have an outlet for those surging hormones. That's one of the reasons why most ancient societies advocated marrying young, and why a married couple is sometimes still considered the basic building block of the society.

      The best way to keep people from doing stupid things is to make sure that

      • Quite right.

        I remember all too well one of our apprentices who had what I can only describe as a remarkable car at the age of 21. How he afforded the insurance I have no idea. Then for some reason a remarkably attractive girl took a fancy to him. Six months later he was presented with an ultimatum, and a week later he turned up for work in a Renault Clio.

        The power of love. And sex...from what I heard from the other apprentices, lots and lots of sex.

  • For those of you who don't know, about 25% of the population of Estonia is ethnically Russian. These people do not see themselves as Estonian citizens, but as Russians who happen to live in Estonia. Russian is no longer an official language there. Note that the Russian population doesn't want to leave as life in the EU has a lot of advantages over life in Russia, but they hate the Estonian government. The Russians conveniently overlook the fact that their government forcibly incorporated Estonia into th

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