These attacks were not particularly complex technically and they could have taken place at any other time, although the events as a whole attracted hackers around the world, and many of them managed to use the situation as an arena for honing and applying their skills. One of the first websites to be broke into was that of the Reformist Party, which is chaired by Estonia’s Prime Minister, Andrus Ansip. The text on the website's homepage was replaced with an alleged apology addressed to the Russian-speaking population of Estonia. "The Prime Minister Asks For Forgiveness! The Prime Minister of Estonia and the Estonian government begs the forgiveness of the entire Russian population of Estonia and takes responsibility for returning the Bronze Soldier statue to its rightful place" the hackers wrote.

Meanwhile, Russian websites were also subjected to the attacks."On May 3 this year the website of the President of Russia was hit by an unprecedented scale of hacker attacks from servers that seem to be located in the Baltics"RIA Novosti news agency was told by a source in the Kremlin. However, thanks to a multifaceted backup system and a modern security system, the president's website managed to retain control. The source at the Kremlin did admit that "there were certain problems." "The hacker attacks on government institutions in various countries are, unfortunately, a widespread practice" added the source.


The attacks also targeted Russian media outlets, such as the Ekho Moskvy radio station, and the Kommersant newspaper. In some cases the victims of these attacks did not even make the connection between the events in Estonia and the attacks on their sites. Estonian hackers were likely party to the attacks against the sites of their direct opponents on Russian soil. On May 9, the website for the protectors of the monument was hacked. The homepage no longer featured the "Night Watch" (dozor.ru) organization information - it was replaced with a banner that read: "Proud to be Estonian" with an Estonian flag and "Estonia Forever!" Furthermore, the hackers also attacked at least one other site: 1-net.ru. This was a direct exchange of virtual blows, as you can see from these screenshots:



(c) F-Secure

How did the Estonian authorities respond? First, the country’s Central Criminal Police arrested a 19 year-old resident of Tallinn named Dmitri, who happened to have a higher technical education, as a suspect in the cyber attacks against government websites. The next developments, however, were completely unexpected. Estonian politicians broke an unspoken rule when the accused the Russian special service of orchestrating the attacks - and for the first time, the word "cyberwar" was used at this level.

It is no secret for anyone that the most prominent government special services have special departments dedicated to the security of a country's electronic resources and taking appropriate measures to do so. We call this "e-reconnaissance". There are similar divisions in the US army, and its members have even taken part in some hacker competitions to penetrate electronic resources, although without much success.