Lithuania Weathers Cyber Attack, Braces for Round 2

Via Security Fix -

Hundreds of Lithuanian government and corporate Web sites were hacked and plastered with Soviet-era symbols and other digital graffiti this week in what appears to be a coordinated cyber attack launched by Russian hacker groups.

A New York Times story reports that Lithuanian officials did not directly accuse Russian hackers of initiating the attacks, but said they had come from foreign computers. However, iDefense, a security intelligence firm, based in Reston, Va., attributed the attacks to nationalistic Russian hacker groups protesting a new Lithuanian law banning the display of Soviet emblems, including honors won during World War II.

According to Lithuanian media reports, the attacks shut down the Web sites of the national ethics body, the securities and exchange commission, the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, among others. iDefense said hacker groups used Internet forums and blasted spam e-mails to spotlight a manifesto called "Hackers United Against External Threats to Russia," which called for an expansion of the targets to include Ukraine, the rest of the Baltic states, and "flagrant" Western nations for supporting the expansion of NATO.

iDefense analyst Kimberly Zenz said for a while, it was unclear whether the attacks would die off or escalate into an assault akin to the cyber blitz unleashed last year against Estonia. In April 2007, the ultra-wired country suffered major disruptions in much of its information infrastructure, thanks largely to Russian hackers who were upset over the removal of a Soviet World War II memorial from the center of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

One hacker Web site, hack-wars.ru, appeared to take a central role in organizing the attacks, Zenz said.

"They said they wanted to offer training and coordination so that whenever they want to attack someone online they have a force of soldiers ready to go," she said. "They want to unite Russian hackers into an organized political hack force."

But by Monday afternoon, most of the tagged Lithuanian Web sites were back to displaying their normal content, and no escalation of the attack had materialized.