A 20-year-old hacker has become the first person to be convicted for taking
part in last year's attacks on Estonian web sites.
Dmitri Galushkevic, an ethnic Russian, was convicted of masterminding a
series of attacks between May and April 4 against the website of Estonian Prime
Minister Andrus Ansip. The student will pay a fine of roughly 1100 Euros,
according to Agence
France-Presse.
The attacks were launched last year after Estonian officials removed a bronze
statue memorialising Soviet soldiers. The act prompted backlash among the
country's ethnic Russian population and lead to a series of protests in which
one person was killed.
The move also prompted an unprecedented effort in cyberspace. Russian hackers
mobilised in late May to
cripple
Estonian government websites.
The attacks were initially
blamed
on the Russian government, which was alleged to have emplyed the use of
botnets to conduct the assult.
However, Moscow was cleared after the attack was found to be the work of
a
flash mob organised online and armed with special tools designed to take
down the government sites.
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