Lithuania instituted a law to remove and prohibit symbols of Communism and in response over 300 Lithuania websites were defaced by Russian hackers. Welcome to Estonia 2.0
From Blogs.ZDNet.com:
According to Lithuanian media reports, the attacks shut down the Web sites of the national ethics body, the securities and exchange commission, the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, among others. iDefense said hacker groups used Internet forums and blasted spam e-mails to spotlight a manifesto called “Hackers United Against External Threats to Russia,” which called for an expansion of the targets to include Ukraine, the rest of the Baltic states, and “flagrant” Western nations for supporting the expansion of NATO.
From Washington Post:
Unidentified hackers broke into several hundred Lithuanian Web sites over the weekend, plastering them with communist symbols, government officials said Monday. The hackers posted Soviet symbols — the hammer and sickle, as well as the five-pointed star — and scathing messages with profanities on Web sites based in the ex-Soviet nation, officials said.
These events offer a glimpse of the new face of international warfare that will be fought between nation states as well as independent activist groups. We will soon be seeing cyberattacks coordinated with traditional military offensives. These current brand of cyberwarfare is akin to graffiti and vandalism but it should serve as a sign of the impending new front of warfare. We’ve seen these methods used by China against Tibet and now the second incident from Russian hacker groups.
Computer security is going through a paradigm shift from solely preserving the integrity of business and economic data to being an integral part of national security.
