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Government Security News

Estonian Cyber Defence Hub Set Up 95

Posted by samzenpus from the protecting-the-innocent dept.
w1z4rd writes "The BBC reports that seven Nato nations have backed a new cyber defence centre in Estonia, which last year blamed Russia for weeks of attacks on its internet structure. The US will initially send an observer to the project, which will have some 30 staff when fully operational in August."
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Estonian Cyber Defence Hub Set Up More

Estonian Cyber Defence Hub Set Up

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  • Obligatory: (Score:4, Funny)

    by UncleTogie ( 1004853 ) * on Thursday May 15, 2008 @12:44AM (#23414410) Homepage Journal

    Did anyone else read that as "Elbonia" when they first read it? I was picturing an ungodly amalgamation of mud, wooden slingshots, 286s, and farm animals...

    • Borat: My computer, it is dead!

      Victim: That's terrible!

      Borat: No, is OK. My friend Igor give me 386 for massage with, how you say, happy finish.

    • Re:Obligatory: (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15, 2008 @03:29AM (#23415112)
      No, because I can read.

  • bummer (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by the brown guy ( 1235418 )
    Cyber Defence sounds so much more cooler than it actually is...

  • What happen ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by jddj ( 1085169 ) on Thursday May 15, 2008 @12:53AM (#23414434) Journal
    Somebody set up us the hub!

  • NATO ? Russia ? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bytesex ( 112972 )
    Doesn't sound at all like another attempt by NATO to encroach upon what Russia considers her former sphere of influence. Not at all.

    It's not like I'm some sort of advocate of Russian politics, but someone inside NATO must have a clue about these things and does them deliberately.

    Weird.

    • Re:NATO ? Russia ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thealsir ( 927362 ) on Thursday May 15, 2008 @01:32AM (#23414588) Homepage
      Estonians have always rejected Russian interference in their affairs.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bytesex ( 112972 )
        I know that. But this isn't just a case of Estonians doing something - I applaud them for wanting to defend every one of their borders. It's a case of NATO being an undiplomatic elephant here. I just wonder who is making these policy decisions, what goes on in their head and what their aims are. Last I checked, NATO was a military defence organisation, not an IT outsourcing company.
      • be careful with the word "always".
        estonia was a part of the russian empire for two centuries.

    • Re:NATO ? Russia ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15, 2008 @01:45AM (#23414658)
      Well, Estonia is an independent nation and a member of NATO - how much more "encroachment" can this be?

      And if you ask me, the rest of the world pays far too much attention to Russian whining about the lost glories of their empire as it is. The Russian government deliberately and systematically attacked Estonia's infrastructure last year - now NATO should place the defence hub somewhere else so as to be sensitive to Russian feelings? Ridiculous.

      • Re:NATO ? Russia ? (Score:4, Informative)

        by mauri ( 168049 ) on Thursday May 15, 2008 @06:45AM (#23416014) Homepage Journal
        "The Russian government deliberately and systematically attacked Estonia's infrastructure last year"

        This is of course pure bullshit (tm). And yes, I am Estonian too and know quite a bit about this "attack". Essentially some pissed of guys bought DDoS against some Estonian websites (mainly media and some government) and that was it. There were nothing special in this DDoS, just http queries coming from host of usual suspects (countries with lax security & no ISP filtering of bad traffic) - no notable traffic from Russia.
        Of course the DDoS was bad in our context, our 100mbit line was something like 98-99% full and only upstream filters at ISP managed to block it. But was it cyberwar by Russia? Hardly.

        • But was it cyberwar by Russia? Hardly.
          I think there was a period of time when people strongly suspected Russian government involvement or that the Kremlin was looking the other way. I can imagine some NATO people starting plans for "cyber defense" during this time.
          • Actually, the whole 'Russian attack' angle was cooked up as grist for the propaganda mills. Meanwhile, we deploy anti-missile weaponry in former Soviet satellite states, fund dissidents in the country and bind as many former USSR states into NATO as possible.

            Now, were I playing a game, I would suspect NATO's intentions as well. It's too bad that NATO leaders wish to play this game. For all our military might in the West, the USSR can still annihilate the world several times over.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by mauri ( 168049 )
            Yes, and obviously it was very good PR work on part of our government. And NATO guys found it also usable trick probably. And the rest is history...
            • I wouldn't say it was PR work of US or NATO. The Kremlin was very obviously and openly critical of Estonia for moving their statue, stood by idly while the Estonia was blockaded by Putin-youth, and then there was a DDoS attack from inside Russia aimed at some Estonian government ministries. It's not hard to jump to conclusions there.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Let alone mention that such an institution could in the future help the pesky Ests defened themeselves against cyber attacks. Such as the ones directed against them by Russia when they dared remove a soviet statue from the center of Tallinn. NATO is clearly trying to provoke the peace loving Russians!
  • I first read the title expecting to see some kind of uber-social-engineering against an existing defense hub. I'd wonder if the ambiguous use of "set up" was actually intentional, but yes, I'm familiar with Hanlon's Razor.
  • Ah, here it is! Let's see... Area: 17,413 sq mi, Population: 1,340,602. Huh, well you don't *need* a gov't/military power to DDoS that country. The state of Oregon has more servers and IT personnel than the country of Estonia. I'm guessing their websites cater mostly to Estonians which basically means they consistently failed to take scaling into account. Estonia doesn't need a Cyber Defence Hub. Just a bit of common sense.

    • Re:Estonia, estonia... (Score:5, Informative)

      by shiznatix ( 924851 ) on Thursday May 15, 2008 @02:25AM (#23414800)
      Seriously dude, the article is 8 short paragraphs. Try reading them next time before looking like an idiot.

      The centre will provide research, consultation and training on the development of cyber defences for participating national governments.
      This is a training ground. Not a bunker with a bunch of geeks waiting for someone to DDoS them so they can unleash hell on them.

      I'm guessing their websites cater mostly to Estonians which basically means they consistently failed to take scaling into account. Estonia doesn't need a Cyber Defence Hub. Just a bit of common sense.
      Thats just stupid. Since nearly every single bank user in Estonia uses online banking and since there are a million different services provided online by the government the servers have been setup with scaling in mind. That 1.3 million will hit the tax website on the first day that you can file you taxes (yes, we do all our taxes online) and the server does just fine. Common sense is saying that they are doing things just fine with scaling.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by PenGun ( 794213 )
        Indeed once one has some presence in their little crib, which I imagine will be almost instant, then the training will commence. I dunno if they will benefit from it though. ;)

          Damn a million services, 1.3 million people on line, wow man you guys are fantastic. A billion combinations and plus big time traffic, you know this may just be the real problem.

          Teh intranets are just such massive fun.
      • Just let them think you are using floppy disks and 1200 baud modems.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by antirelic ( 1030688 )
      Estonia, like many other Baltic nations and former Soviet satellite nations, are in the middle of a constant power struggle between East and West. Your argument comparing Oregon and Estonia is pretty much irrational, due to the fact that Oregon does not have the Russian foreign service trying to alter its foreign agenda. Russia, which has pretty much dominated Estonia and most other Baltic nations since the early 19th century, has become a resurgent power with expanding capabilities and has been using those

  • Obvious Foreshadowing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15, 2008 @01:38AM (#23414624)
    I think this is evidence of a trend towards international organizations to create divisions or authorities responsible for cyber governance/monitoring/standardization/accountability.

    I am keeping my eyes peeled for a new division/center [news.com] in the UN [un.org] for cyberspace soon.

  • Interesting, but really needed? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Yogiz ( 1123127 ) on Thursday May 15, 2008 @02:47AM (#23414910) Journal
    Being an Estonian I can say that the so called attacks weren't really such a big deal. Basically a few government web pages (parliament's, government's president's and couple more) were DDOS'ed for a couple of hours from Russian ips. It's not like this caused too much trouble (the government's infranet still worked just fine, the citizens just couldn't access the pages). I do think that the idea of Cyber Defence is quite cool and I'm glad, that we're the pioneers here but it does seem that this really is the primary reason here, to pioneer something. It might still become useful one day and I'll be interested to see how this rolls out. I do enjoy the fact that the small size of Estonia allows us to try all the new IT solutions on quite a large scale very fast. So far we've done quite well and I hope that we can do something revolutionary on the international scale as well. The IT innovation part of Estonia is really something I'm proud of.

    • I do think that the idea of Cyber Defence is quite cool and I'm glad, that we're the pioneers here but it does seem that this really is the primary reason here, to pioneer something. It might still become useful one day and I'll be interested to see how this rolls out.

      New? Pioneers? Morris worm was launched, and defeated by co-operating sysadmins and programmers in 1988, 20 years ago. CERT [cert.org] was founded in the same year. Bugtraq mailing list [seclists.org] is operating since 1993. CVE [mitre.org] exists since 1999. And those are organizations that are maintaining ongoing up to date information on security-related matters. OpenBSD was founded in 1995. SELinux was released in 2000. grsecurity in 2001. Those are only most prominent software projects related to security.

      The only thing you are "pioneeri

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Svippy ( 876087 )

        While Estonia may not pioneering on this issue. Estonia was the first country in the world to use Internet voting (known as "e-voting" in Estonia) back in March, 2007. Accordingly, about 30 000 people used the Internet to vote for their candidates.

        But your parent poster made a good point. Estonia is small enough to try these computer systems, and since its IT infrastructure is rather new, it can allow for quite newer methods and do it a lot faster.

        A good comparison is the Copenhagen Metro [wikipedia.org]. Many cities

        • While Estonia may not pioneering on this issue. Estonia was the first country in the world to use Internet voting (known as "e-voting" in Estonia) back in March, 2007. Accordingly, about 30 000 people used the Internet to vote for their candidates.

          Why exactly is this supposed to be a good thing?

          But your parent poster made a good point. Estonia is small enough to try these computer systems, and since its IT infrastructure is rather new, it can allow for quite newer methods and do it a lot faster.

          Newer methods are not called "IT solutions". You have "IT solution" when an outside consultant brings you massive amount of various companies' marketing materials, and half a year into the project you are running most expensive software packages ever made by SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, HP, Siebel, and $deity knows what, yet your paid-by-the-hour consultants seem to be incapable of making those things provide anything that is actually useful for your company. You

  • What?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by phagstrom ( 451510 ) on Thursday May 15, 2008 @02:50AM (#23414932)
    They'll never defend anything with a hub. At the very least they should get a router. ~

  • At first, they should grow up (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RCL ( 891376 ) on Thursday May 15, 2008 @03:15AM (#23415044) Homepage
    Estonians should get real and find the ways to cooperate with Russia, not to pretend that Russia does not exist. You just can't deliberately ignore a 100 mln people living next to you, not to mention enraging them. You should account for their feelings when making political decisions.

    And that does not mean that Estonia should give up its sovereignty. You just cannot be totally independent from your neighbours. Estonia is no island.

    • No, Estonia can't ignore Russia, and it wont. But Russia MUST STOP trying to rule Estonia and respect Estonia as a sovereign nation. Until Russia stops the offensive towards Estonia, Estonia will have a defencive stance towards the nation which has brought them so much great suffering in the past.

      Shouldn't Estonia defend itself? Should we instead bow to the hostile soviets looking to swallow us?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by RCL ( 891376 )
        For Russians, the victory over Nazis is an important part of national identity. For Estonians, the enmity towards Russia is the same thing.

        Both sides' behavior is immature. Estonia exaggerates Russia's role in the country's troubled past (some even go that far to claim that siding with Nazi Germany would be a better option, or at least no worse), and treats all of its past and present citizens siding with Russians as traitors, which is obviously wrong (if that's their cultural preference and/or heritage,

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday May 15, 2008 @05:41AM (#23415678)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by RCL ( 891376 )

        Based on current trends, Russia's present population doesn't necessarily serve as an argument that it is a major player worth taking into account. The birthrate of ethnic Russians is going down quickly, the birthrate of minorities (many of which, like the Finno-Ugrian Mari, support Estonia against Moscow) is going up, not to mention the huge presence of Chinese squatters all over the Russian Far East. Russia is going from a big, strong important nation to one very close to being torn apart. That's why a lot of people think bullying Estonia and trying to re-establish a sphere of influence is a sign of desperation.

        You know, even if Russia's population halved today, it would still be larger than Iran, let alone Iraq. You can't ignore opinion of such a large group of people being in your direct neighbourhood, nor you can't prevent them from flooding the neighbouring EU countries (e.g. if civil war breaks out in Russia), and becoming an important minority in those.

        Isolationist policy won't help here. It would help for overseas territories like US, but it won't for EU. EU is setting a time bomb by trying to isolate it

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fsmunoz ( 267297 )
        The birthrate of ethnic Russians is going down quickly, the birthrate of minorities

        Estonia must answer to its fellow EU members when it formulates foreign policy decisions.

        Slightly offtopic... but what you say about Russia is even more true in Western Europe. If you consider that Russia is close to being "torn apart", I wonder what is your opinion on the rest of the EU (I think you're right BTW, since I think that Europe is also close to being torn apart).

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Both my grandpas were murdered by russians after we "cooperated" with Russia in 1941. Practically every estonian have relatives who have been murdered, deported or imprisoned by russians. What a wonderful neighbours we have for cooperation!
  • AFAIK DDoS is more quality of service and ISP issue... Is it going to be training center where ISPs can send their employees to take IPv4, "packet filtering" and "upstream traffic tracking" courses? Or they will hack ISPs routers, track streams themselves and will nuke "areas of origin in a question" from the orbit?

  • So the pertinent questions is... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by religious freak ( 1005821 ) on Thursday May 15, 2008 @03:22AM (#23415084)
    Why is it that whenever I read about nationwide, concerted, coordinated and serious efforts related to IT security, the USA is never mentioned?

    Sure, we've got the airforce doing this and some twig of the FBI doing that, but where's the real commitment to security? Where's the offensive capability and overwhelming manpower the Chinese supposedly have? Where's the planning that seems to be happening in Europe? We're sending an "observer" -- WTF?

    I'd love to believe we're just smarter about it. What's the point of broadcasting you have attack power on something as covert as IT -- in peacetime? But somehow I doubt it.

    NSA is near god-like in terms of technical prowess; does anybody think we're utilizing it like we should?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by iNaya ( 1049686 )

      Why is the USA never mentioned?? Because the NSA is behind all cyber-crimes in the world. Hacking, spamming, DDoS, Nigerian scams... It's all one big cover up!!1!11

    • One school of thought would suggest that by not making a big deal out of it, the USA isn't putting out information to help others beat the system, etc. Just a thought.
  • Amazing but I must encourage this fortifying of the internet against the terrorist and evil forig ....... collapses helpless with laughter. A hub, a fucking hub. These people are way beyond clueless.
  • Setting up a cyber-defence HQ in Estonia akin to building a strategic nuclear command-and-control facility in Nagasaki.

  • Propaganda: Disgruntled Youth or Evil Russians? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by intnsred ( 199771 ) on Thursday May 15, 2008 @01:41PM (#23422076)
    Security guru Bruce Schneier's Cryptogram [schneier.com] newsletter has a good blurb on this issue and the topic of whether this was some disgruntled Estonian youths or was the "evil Russian gov't" that was responsible for the attacks.

  • That was a tomb, not just a "statue" (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Few people would care about a statue and launch a cyber war. That was a tomb where Russian soldiers were buried.

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