Sergei Markov says he knows who started the Estonia cyber war

Last Updated on Friday, 6 March 2009 02:46 Written by admin Friday, 6 March 2009 02:46

… it was his assistant!

A new blog post for Ekho Moskvy makes a startling revelation about the 2007 attacks. The post, by journalist Nargiz Asadova — a columnist for RIA Novosti based in Washington, and an Ekho Moskvy host — describes a March 3 panel discussion between Russian and American experts on information warfare in the 21st century.

Asadova, who was moderating the discussion, asked why Russia is routinely blamed for the cyberattacks in Estonia and Georgia, where government sites were seriously disrupted during the August war.

She might not have been expecting the answer she got from Sergei Markov, a State Duma Deputy from the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party: “About the cyberattack on Estonia… don’t worry, that attack was carried out by my assistant. I won’t tell you his name, because then he might not be able to get visas.”

Markov, a political analyst who has long been one of Vladimir Putin’s glibbest defenders, went on to explain that this assistant happened to be in “one of the unrecognized republics” during the dispute with Estonia and had decided on his own that “something bad had to be done to these fascists.” So he went ahead and launched a cyberwar.

“Turns out it was purely a reaction from civil society,” Markov reportedly said, adding ominously, “and, incidentally, such things will happen more and more.”

Markov and the Nashi Youth Movement

Apart from Markov’s assistant, the only other person who has confessed his involvement in the Estonia attack was a Commissar of the Nashi, Konstantin Goloskokov.

On July 21, 2008, Sergei Markov attended Nashi’s 2008 ‘Innovation Forum‘, which suffered from a 50% drop in attendance from the year before. Markov commented:

“The first idea was to block a possible Orange Revolution, that’s why last year was so important. Now, they don’t know what to do.”

Perhaps the other cause for Nashi’s doldrums was that in 2007 they were coming off the high of the Estonian cyberwar. Coincidently on July 20, 2008, the day before this Nashi event, anonymous Russian hackers launched a DDOS attack that took the President of Georgia’s website offline.

19 days later, the Nashi doldrums must have vanished when a Russian sea, air, and land assault was launched against Georgia while nationalistic Russian hackers engaged their Georgian counterparts in cyber warfare.

I wonder how many Nashi participated?