Behind the Estonia Cyber Attacks

Published: 2009-03-08
Last Updated: 2009-03-09 07:47:44 UTC
by Marcus Sachs (Version: 1)
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Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty ran a story on Friday that we just discovered.  According to the article, a Russian official has admitted that Russia was responsible for the cyber attacks on Estonia in April/May 2007.  We don't have any other data to correlate this with, so we ask our readers if you know of any other independent reporting of this please let us know via our contact form.

If this story is true, it adds yet another twist to the "truth" of what happened in Estonia in 2007 and perhaps also with respect to the alleged Russian cyber attacks against Georgia last year.  There is no internationally accepted formal definition of "cyber warfare" even though many in the media like to use that term freely when describing denial of service attacks, website defacements, or other activities that otherwise would be labeled as criminal behavior.  I don't personally believe that any hostile activity we have seen so far in cyberspace can be labeled "warfare" but rather is either criminal or espionage related.  What do you think?  Cyberwar or criminal?  Let us know via the comment feature below or via our contact form.

Marcus H. Sachs
Director, SANS Internet Storm Center

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Daylight Saving Time Already?

Published: 2009-03-08
Last Updated: 2009-03-08 01:49:24 UTC
by Marcus Sachs (Version: 1)
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Yes, readers, it's that time of year already.  Hopefully all of our North American readers will just wake up an hour earlier on Sunday morning and not worry about server logs having an hour of "missing" data, since all of them are running their server clocks set to GMT, right?  Of course!

For those interested in further information on Daylight Saving Time, see these relevant Wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_around_the_world

For everybody else, sorry about the missed hour.  You'll get it back later this year.

One other thing, a reader last year pointed out something obvious.  If you have a bedroom clock, VCR, or other device that automatically adjusts for Daylight Saving Time but has no way to update its firmware to the new dates of changeover, simply advance the time zone to the one that is east of you for the next few weeks until we hit the old day that is burned into your firmware (first Sunday in April.)  Then set it back to the true time zone you are in.  Some call this the "Y2K7 Problem."  Here's another Wikipedia article for your reading pleasure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y2K7

Marcus H. Sachs
Director, SANS Internet Storm Center

ps - don't forget about those smoke detector batteries!

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