Tallinn - Authorities in Estonia fined a 20-year-old Tallinn resident for participating in cyber attacks on government servers, paralyzing them during the spring riots in the capital, local media reported on Wednesday. A county court in Tallinn fined Dmitri Galushkevich 17,500 Estonian kroons (1,118 euros), an amount equal to a minimum daily wage for 350 days, for computer sabotage and attacking the Web site of the Reform Party of Prime Minister Andrus Ansip.
This is the first punishment handed down for the last year's computer attacks which crippled government's, banks' and even less- visited schools' Web sites in this small Baltic EU member.
According to the indictment, Galushkevich launched a denial-of- service (DDoS) attacks on the government servers and the servers of the ruling Reform Party in protest against the government's decision to relocate the Soviet-era World War II monument. Massive DDoS attacks paralyzed government's Web sites, making them inaccessible.
The move to relocate the monument and remains of the Soviet soldiers sparked riots in Tallinn and a diplomatic row abroad. Russia accused Estonia of "blasphemy" and supporting Nazism, while Estonia accused Russian state web servers of hosting a series of cyber- attacks on Estonian government servers.
A DDoS attack involves commanding other computers to bombard a Web site with requests for data, causing the site to stop working. Hackers use botnets - or groups of computers they have infected with malicious software - to launch an attack.
Galushkevich together with yet unidentified accomplices launched DDoS attacks from April 25 to May 4 from his Tallinn home after the government decide to relocate the Bronze Soldier along with the remains of the Soviet soldiers from the town center to a military cemetery, BNS reported.
