Speaking on the ‘Fighting Shadows’ panel at the Davos convention in Switzerland on Saturday,Toomas Hendrik Ilves joined senior figures from Kaspersky, Microsoft and the United Nations in calling for improved cyber-crime policing, laws and collaboration – whilst also calling into question how – and if – countries can respond to cyber-attacks.
Estonian websites were famously hit by distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in 2007, which at the time was rumoured to be work of the Russian government. Subsequently, the country became one of the world’s most advanced countries on cyber-security, even establishing the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence of Excellence in Tallinn in August 2010. Ilves – who said that the country also helped with similar DDoS attacks against Georgian websites a year later – admitted that DDoS and nation-state attacks are very different things, but said that defending against cyber-criminals is almost impossible considering outdated laws…
