Jul 7, 2008 : Lithuanian Sites Hacked by Russians

📅 July 7, 2008 - Lithuania's recent ban of Soviet symbols including the hammer and sickle and the five-pointed star has prompted Pro-Russian Soviet Symbol hackers to deface more than 300 Lithuanian sites with the banned symbols and profane messages, according to government officials.


Warning of last week's attack that hit both business and government sites was given days before, according to independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst Dancho Danchev, who reported the incident on ZDNet security blog Zero Day.According to Danchev, the campaign started across web forums a week before. An Estonian TV network reported that they came across discussions by novice hackers hoping to launch a large-scale distributed denial-of-service attack against sites in Latvia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Estonia.

Almost all of the 300 web sites affected were hosted on ISP Hostex (hostex.net), previously known as Microlink, according to a Russian source.Lituanian researchers reported that the attacks were channeled through France and Sweden. Danchev said an attack can be outsourced and requested as a service due to new computing capabilities. He is, however, in doubt that there will be any upcoming Russian-based DDoS attacks due to diminishing discussion on forums, but this attack "surely proves that they are motivated enough to go further."

This act is the latest in a series of Russian "Hacktivism," including the latest Estonian cyberattack in May spurred by Estonia's removal of a Red Army memorial from capital city Tallinn.