IF ESTONIA’S defense minister is right, his nation has just been subjected to the computer equivalent of Pearl Harbor, and the attack may have been launched by Estonia’s old occupiers, the Russians.
Estonia and Russia have been on the outs recently because the Estonian government has moved a Soviet-era war memorial from its place of honor in Estonia’s capital to a cemetery outside the city. The Russians said moving the statute was a gesture of disrespect to the soldiers who defeated the Nazis in Estonia.
A few weeks ago, computers outside the country began a massive attack on corporate and government Web sites in Estonia. The attacks lasted more than two weeks. At its peak, the Estonians say, more than a million computers around the world were used to press the attacks.
The defense minister, Jaak Aaviksoo, said the earliest attacks seemed to originate from Internet addresses in Russian government offices.
The Russian government says that it had nothing to do with the attacks and suggested that the attackers were trying to frame Russia.
That may be so.
But whoever attacked the computers of Estonia was doing more than playing a hacker’s prank. The number of computers involved and the length of the attack suggest that someone was making a serious attempt to damage or crash the nation’s computer networks. In a high-tech country such as Estonia, a successful attack could cause havoc.
NATO certainly thinks so. The military alliance sent a computer expert to Estonia to investigate the attack. Used in the way they were used against Estonia, computers are nothing less that weapons of terror.
In a way, it would be reassuring to know that the attacks were launched by Russia. That would make some sense and the attacks could be viewed as the modern equivalent of sending a gunboat to show the flag.
But if the attacks were committed by a third party that had no score to settle but merely wanted to demonstrate its strength, then Estonia might be only the first target of the terrorists.
In a world that is hardwired together, in which computers are used to control every vital function, how strong or secure is any nation when a determined attack is made on its computers?