The cyberattack that changed the world

moments that change the course of history are obvious instantly. 

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The 2003 invasion of Iraq. Broadcast live around the globe, the gruesome images of these events set the stage for the 21st century. Everyone knew it even while the cameras were rolling.

Others you have likely never heard of.

On a chilly Baltic spring day in 2007, a much quieter act of violence began with just an error message here, a disconnected server there. It would end by crippling the institutions of a major European capital, escalating what had been a war of words between two countries, Russia and Estonia, into something unprecedented: Cyberwar.

This surreptitious smash into Estonia's digital heart sparked a shift in the fighting stance of the world’s most powerful militaries, richest governments, and most cutting-edge private companies that continues to this day.

Estonians compare the day to their own 9/11. Imagine what would happen if Wall St. financial institutions and every American bank was crushed under the weight of a cyberattack while Washington, D.C.'s institutions fell apart under the same withering offensive. Meanwhile, what if no one could read newspapers or call 911? 

That's the level of attack that Estonia faced.

In July 2016, the world's most powerful military alliance will meet in Poland. Over the last decade, NATO's priorities have changed. In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, an attack by Russia—of any kind—once seemed almost inconceivable.

But military tension has returned to Eastern Europe as Russia and NATO eye each other wearily. The Western alliance was shifting, its centers of power moving steadily eastward to capitals like Warsaw, Ankara, and Tallinn. Two old rivals are standing up.

The pressure has been building since that historic moment in 2007.

It’s been called Web War I. That’s how new and monumental this incident was for those who experienced it. It set the stage for Web Wars to come. And it all started with a statue.

Soviet “liberators”

As with so many historic singular moments, the lead up to Web War I is marked by decades of blood and oppression.

By NuclearVacuum [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons

Estonia is a small country in Northern Europe. It borders the Baltic Sea, Latvia, and Russia. That last one is big in every sense of the word. 

A former Soviet satellite, Estonia was on the wrong end of a half-century occupation that turned the country into a hyper-militarized border zone from which the Soviet Army poised its war-fighting power toward the West.

In the middle of the 20th century, the country was traded back and forth between the Soviets and Nazis in bloodshed that resulted not just in tens of thousands of Estonian deaths but also a brutal authoritarian disruption to their society that ultimately lasted for decades. Before that, Estonia was ruled for centuries by powers like Sweden and Denmark.

True independence was a foreign concept to many Estonians, but the 20th century brought a "national awakening" in which millions yearned for sovereignty.

When the Soviets and Nazis divided up Eastern Europe preceding World War II, Estonia went to the Russians, who promptly occupied the country and installed a puppet government. The Nazis invaded and occupied from 1941 to 1944, when the Soviets returned for what seemed would be forever.

Estonia’s Russian overlords didn’t see their occupation as brutal or disruptive or illegal the way the West did. The Soviet propagandists—and today’s Russian government—very earnestly said it was all legitimate.

In 1947, with Eastern European rubble still soaked in the horrors of war, the Soviets built a six-foot-tall bronze statue memorializing their soldiers and war effort. They put it right in downtown Tallinn, Estonia’s coastal capital. The Soviets called it Monument to the Liberators of Tallinn.

Source http://www.dailydot.com/politics/web-war-cyberattack-russia-estonia/