TALLINN - An online security expert has said the Russian government was not responsible for launching last month's crippling attacks on Estonian Web sites. Instead, a group of highly skilled Russian speaking computer gurus appeared to be behind the blitz, which was reported around the world as the first "cyberwar."
That was the opinion of Jose Nazario, a senior security engineer from Arbor Networks, a private online security consultancy that independently analyzed the attacks.
"None of the sources we have analyzed from around the world show a clear line from Moscow to Tallinn," Nazario said.
"We see signs of Russian nationalism at work here, but no Russian government connection."
The attacks 's called distributed denial of service, or DDOS in computer speak 's were launched shortly after the Estonian government removed the controversial Bronze Soldier monument in late April.
Nazario said scripts passed around on Russian language Web forums could have been copied by individual users around the world to join in the attacks, in which massive amounts of data was sent to Web sites, causing them to crash.
"The sources of attacks were worldwide rather than just from a few locations," Nazario said.
"The attackers used a giant network of botnets, perhaps as many as 1 million computers in places as far away as the U.S. and Vietnam, to increase the impact of the attack."
"Most of the attacks appeared more about making a statement at a high profile Web site or two than about disrupting Estonia's online life or economy." Foreign Minister Urmas Paet was quick to blame the Kremlin for crippling the nation's Web systems.
Hillar Aarelaid, head of Estonia's Computer Emergency Response Team, believes simply analyzing the data is not enough.
"You can't make a judgment based only on this technical data. It's impossible to tell who orchestrated it, or if it was orchestrated at all. It would be up to the police to look at it further."
