Vincent Arnold

BERLIN, Aug. 6 (UPI) — The computer attack aimed at Estonia recently shows that the world can’t ignore the dangers of cyberterrorism any longer.

It was one of the biggest cyberattacks ever launched, and it nearly brought an entire country to its knees. On April 27, traffic on government and banking Web sites based in Estonia began to increase rapidly; by the next day, the hackers began to use Russian weblogs to spread the message and instigate further participation; by then, traffic had increased nearly 1,000 times, and virtually all Web sites were down. Some have called the attacks, which spread into May, the world’s first Internet war.

The attack came at a time of frayed nerves. As it followed a diplomatic row between Estonia and Russia over the relocation of a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn, observers in Estonia and media reports initially accused the Russian government of having launched the assault.

Full article and source: UPI

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 8:25 am and is filed under Information Security.