This was the first time that a botnet threatened the national security of an entire nation."īut just as the unrest subsided, a different kind of aggression began to sweep the country. "All major commercial banks, telcos, media outlets, and name servers - the phone books of the Internet - felt the impact, and this affected the majority of the Estonian population. "The attacks were aimed at the essential electronic infrastructure of the Republic of Estonia," Aaviksoo tells me later. But never before had an entire country been targeted on almost every digital front all at once, and never before had a government itself fought back. This was not the first botnet strike ever, nor was it the largest. In the coming months, commentators around the world would look back at this moment and debate its significance. Should Aaviksoo invoke NATO Article 5, which states that an assault on one allied country obligates the alliance to attack the aggressor? But a digital invasion? Estonia is a member of both NATO and the European Union. Ministers of defense develop strategies to combat the threat of missile attacks, naval bombardment, air raids, and tank advances. It is known as a botnet, and it had slipped into the country through its least protected border - the Internet. The aide explained what was going on: They were under attack by a rogue computer network. The border guards had reported no incursions, and Estonian airspace had not been violated. An enemy had invaded and was assaulting dozens of targets. Government communications were going down. He hadn't even changed the art on the walls.Īn aide rushed in with a report. The former director of the University of Tartu Institute of Experimental Physics and Technology had been the Estonian defense minister for only four weeks. Jaak Aaviksoo attempted to pull up the sites of a couple of other papers. He stared at the error message: For some reason, the site for Estonia's leading newspaper, the Postimees, wasn't responding. * Photo: Donald Milne * _The minister _of defense checked the Web page again - still nothing. Defense minister Jaak Aaviksoo got help from NATO in the wake of the cyberattacks.
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