The Decliner

One of Russia’s most prominent political youth movements, the anti-Fascist group “Nashi” (or “Nashe”,) was recently back in the news for asserting that it had been behind denial-of-service attacks on Estonian web servers back in 2007, following that country’s removal of a Soviet memorial in the city of Tallinn to a less prominent location.

The statue, referred to as the “Bronze Soldier,” was transported to a cemetery after it was deemed inappropriate by ethnic Estonians because of its commemoration of Soviet rule. Unfortunately, Russia’s foreign relations under Putin’s leadership with former satellite states of the Soviet Union demanded (and demands) a certain amount of docility, and removing the statue set off a firestorm of criticism from the Kremlin, along with its junior, color-coordinated Nashi brigade.

DDoS (denial-of-service) attacks are nothing new, but the severity of the cyber attacks inflicted on Estonia dring the “Estonian Cyberwar” was of a scope rarely seen before. Websites for the Estonian parliament, banks, ministries, and many of its news sources were overwhelmed and shut down. Other attacks involved modification of existing websites, such as the Estonian Reform Party’s (the liberal, free-market party).

Arts Technica reported that Nashe’s “Commisar,” Konstantin Goloskokov, freely admitted that his group had been behind the cyberwarfare directed at Estonia:

“I wouldn’t have called it a cyber attack; it was cyber defense,” Goloskokov said. “We taught the Estonian regime the lesson that if they act illegally, we will respond in an adequate way.”

The fact that Goloskokov is willing to acknowledge his group’s complicity in what is obviously an illegal act only reinforces his comfortable position with the Russian government, and one wouldn’t expect any kind of reprimand to result from the admission.

Still, while Nashe seemed to be at its height of popularity with the Kremlin following the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, and leading up to national election of Dmitry Medvedev, it is reported that the Kremlin’s support of the group has been on a definite decline. It’s not so much that the nationalist ideology behind Nashi has dissipated, but that it is simply no longer necessary to generate support (or intimidate rival political groups) for a pro-Putin/Medvedev platform.

Moreover, while Putin’s government allegedly used Nashi as a proxy to express its “displeasure” with foreign interests and shape public discourse, in the last few years, as Putin’s Kremlin has become far more direct in its foreign policy (such as cutting off natural gas supplies to neighbors, for example), it must seem pointless to take such an indirect approach.

The 2007 DDoS attacks (now attributed to Nashi) have since become a case study used by militaries around the world to highlight the potential dangers that such a seemingly low-tech onslaught can have on a country’s internet infrastructure.

While high-tech attacks like satellite killers and super hackers infiltrating nuclear launch sites might seem like the more glamorous side of cyberwarfare, it is far likelier that we will see DDoS attacks with greater frequency, simply because of the relative ease with which they can be launched by patriotic youth sitting in a non-descript internet cafe somewhere in central Moscow.

I leave you with this, a Nashi production to promote enlistment in the Russian army (in Russian). Note the giant American octopus/Cthulhu creature spreading its tentacles into Russian territory, and the excited man representing Japan bowing agreeably:

Tags: Nashi, Russia

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 10:31 pm and is filed under politics, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.