One Man Cyberwar  

The great Russian cyber-attack on Estonia last year was one of the many stories I cast a cynical eye over last year in "The Shockwave Rider" (which I see is now back at last in slot number 5 in the eponymous Google search, just where it started out - never let it be said that Google is evil).

I can't say I was particularly surprised to read in Wired that the whole thing was done by a cranky ethnic Russian geek living in Estonia.

A 20-year-old man named Dmitri Galushkevich is the first cyber solider to face justice for launching one of the attacks in last year's "cyber war" against Estonia, AFP reports.

You'll recall that Estonia blamed the Russian government for last spring's DDoS attacks, and even considered invoking NATO Article 5 to marshal a multinational military counter attack against Russia -- a perfectly reasonable response to a bunch of websites being overloaded with unwanted traffic. Wired magazine sent a reporter to Russia to try and track down the culprits, but Vladimir Putin's ruthless cyber brigade proved elusive.

And so it comes as quite a shock to THREAT LEVEL to learn that the attacker convicted today isn't a member of the Russian military, nor is he an embittered cyber warrior in Putin's secret service. He doesn't even live in Russia. He's an ethnic Russian who lives in Estonia, who was pissed off over that whole statue thing.

The court fined him 17,500 kroons, or $1,620 dollars, and sent him on his way.