Estonia cyberattacks the work of a mob

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- The cyberattacks against Estonia were carried out by an "Internet mob," not a foreign government, says the man who wrote the after-action report for Tallin.

Gadi Evron, a security technologist for Israel-based consultancy Beyond Security, wrote a post-mortem report for Estonian Internet authorities on the attacks, which used so-called denial of service techniques to cripple several government Web sites.

"The use of the Internet to create an online mob has proven itself and will likely receive more attention in the future," Evron told the Black Hat Web security conference last week, according to a report in PC World.

The attacks in late April followed the Estonian government's decision to relocate a Soviet-era war memorial known as the Bronze Soldier in the capital city of Tallin.

Initial media reports suggested that the attacks were organized by the Russian government in retaliation. The reality, however, Evron said, is that they were carried out by Russian individuals with active support and coordination from security-savvy people in the Russian blogosphere.

Russian-language blogs provided readers simple and detailed instructions on how to join the attacks and help overload Estonian Web sites, for instance, Evron said. The bloggers also kept updating their advice as Estonian incident responders started defending against the initial attacks.