In April 2007, the Baltic nation of Estonia woke up to one of the world’s first major cyber-attacks on civil society carried out by a state. A series of massive “distributed denial of service” assaults – floods of fake traffic from networked computers – targeted government websites, banks, media outlets and online services for weeks, slowing or shutting them down.
These cyber-attacks followed Estonia’s decision to relocate a Soviet-era war memorial and war graves from the centre of the capital city, Tallinn, to a military cemetery.
Amplified by false reports in Russian media, this sparked nights of protest and rioting among Russian-speakers in Tallinn – and cyber chaos throughout the country. Though the cyber-attack was never officially sanctioned by the Kremlin, the “faceless perpetrators” were later shown to have Russian connections.
