Last April and May a series of service attacks against Estonian government sites almost brought the small Baltic nation to a standstill. There was a belief that Russia was behind it all, in the wakeof Estonia removing a Soviet war memorial from its capital, and Nato was called in to investigate. The real reason proved to be less sinister. The hackers were based in Estonia itself, and oneof them, Dmitri Galushkevich, was fined $1650 for his part in the cyber attacks, according to the BBC. Galushkevich is one of about 375,000 ethnic Russiansin the country of 1.3 million, and prosecutors asserted that the student took part in the cyber attacks as a protest against Prime Minister Andrus Ansip. The denial of service attacks hit thesite of Andrus’s political party, government agencies, other political parties and even newspapers, and were part of a bigger picture including rioting where one person was killed. Galushkevich admitted his part in the organized hacking. "In deciding the verdict, the court took into account the fact that he had no criminal record," Gerrit Maesalu, spokesman forthe regional prosecutor’s office in north-east Estonia, told AFP. At the time of the attacks, Estonia blamed Russia and described the attacks as a“cyber war.”
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