Surely Neither the Kremlin Nor Mel are Attacking Estonia

Estonia says cyber-assault may involve the Kremlin

Tell me this is a case of typewriter generation compuparanoia (My computer isn’t working. My enemies must have broken it!). Surely the Russian government isn’t actually launching state-controlled DOS attacks on Estonian websites because they took down a statue? C’mon, this is exactly the kind of immature nationalist prank that virus writers, being commonly of acne laden immaturity, are wont to pull. Supposedly there’s no, you know, evidence of Russian government involvement. How come no one in the Serious Media seems to considering it might not be?

Incidentally, I’m enough of a geek culture buff that these sorts of headlines are reflexively funny to me:

Estonia Sustains Hacker Attacks

I initially read them with the other definition of ‘hacker’ in mind. Holy Crap! The Russians have sent Seymour Cray and Mel to attack Estonia! In octal!

update: I’ve just discovered this Russian translation of ESR’s A Brief History of Hackerdom. Very suspicious.

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