DHS Sending Cybersecurity Experts to Estonia

The Department of Homeland Security is sending a group of cybersecurity experts this week to Estonia to help the nation analyze the cyberattacks that crippled networks there in April, according to an IDG News Service report.

DHS' U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team (US CERT) division will work with Estonian government officials to sift through the data generated from the distributed denial of service attacks on Estonian government systems and banks. A member of the U.S. Secret Service also will join the group to train Estonians in incident response and computer crime investigations, the news service reports.

Computer networks operated by Estonian ministries, banks and media outlets came under attack shortly after the government removed a Soviet statue from downtown Talinn, the country's capital. Estonian government officials said the attacks came from Russia, but it is now unclear who originated the cyberattacks. Gregory Garcia, assistant secretary for cyber security and telecommunications for DHS, told the news service that the group will conduct forensic analysis to determine the nature of the attacks -- and presumably where the attacks came from.