Gadi Evron has written an account of the “Estonian Internet War” in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Evron is a security architect for Afilias Global Registry Services and one of the founders of the Zeroday Emergency Response Team, a group of volunteers who create emergency patches against zero day attacks.

His article, Battling Botnets and Online Mobs — Estonia’s Defense Efforts during the Internet War , is non-technical and gives a good good explanation of what happened and the underlying cultural and political issues.

“What would happen if tomorrow the Internet ceased to function? To most critics, and particularly state officials and policy makers, the possibility that the Internet could one day suddenly disappear is no more than a mere speculation, a highly improbable concept. On May 2007, the events that took place in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, proved everyone wrong. On that day, Estonia fell victim to the first-ever, real Internet war. This article delves into the political context that shaped the incident and analyzes some of the key lessons and policy implications that emerged as a consequence.”

Many expect that understanding, predicting and preventing such events will be critical issues in the coming decade. The distributed and social nature of the Internet and Web create an environment that can be exploited to attack an organizations, whether it is a government, a political movement, a company, the Church of Scientology, a NGO or an advocacy group.

Spotted on IP list.