The massive attacks directed at Estonian servers astonished the international community with their violence and intensity. They alerted computer experts the world over, who witnessed attacks that were unique in their size and volume, sometimes reaching four million packets per second. On 1 June 2007, NATO and the Asymmetric Threats Contingency Alliance (ATCA)⁽¹⁾ claimed to have proof that the attacks were organised by the government of the Russian Federation.⁽²⁾ This seems unlikely, but whether true or not the attacks happened. The devastating effects on information systems due to the interruption of online services caused an immediate panic at the highest levels in individual states, NATO and the European Union.

Engineers and security researchers have tried in vain for years to raise awareness on the part of leaders and users of the threats to the digital world. But the problem is to make themselves heard by those who do not understand how, behind their computer screens, their data can be accessed, changed or destroyed. It seems totally improbable to imagine hundreds of thousands of machines being manipulated by one or several perpetrators, without the knowledge of their owners, attacking a country’s information systems and succeeding in paralysing them to the point of blocking all forms of communication. This scenario has nevertheless been envisaged for some time, and can be developed further by adding other actors, whose falsified identities would considerably complicate the hasty conclusions of those analysing the attack without taking account of these agents. The digital era poses a problem since it demands a high level of technical and analytical competence in a complex domain which is continually changing, and whose use has become an integral part of daily life.

By all appearances this was the case in Estonia, which has just witnessed the consequences of a society digitised without considering the impact of a massive attack. This case is all the more interesting in that it demonstrates perfectly the computer security experts’ theories. Estonia is one of the most ‘wired’ countries of Europe; the majority of its services, particularly its banking services, are only accessible online. However, these were not prepared for a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, although this is a common type of attack, thanks to its exceptional success rate. Even though this event was widely reported, it was only one of almost 20,000 recorded between September 2006 and January 2007.⁽³⁾ The difference is that Estonia had feared severe reprisals from the Russian Federation, following the move of a statue erected to the glory of Soviet Army soldiers at the end of the Second World War, and immediately alerted the international community. The Baltic state announced that the Russian government was the originator of the attacks directed at servers in the governmental, banking, political, financial and information sectors, and requested support from the international community. NATO, the EU and Israel dispatched their experts to analyse and protect Estonian information systems, which had been under massive DDoS attack for nearly three weeks, with most of the targeted websites put out of action.