BONJOUR L'ESTONIE

Google adds Estonia to popular "Street View" feature

MOUNTAIN VIEW - Google on Tuesday morning introduced the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia to its popular Street View feature on Google Maps. It covers nearly all streets in the two countries after they were photographed over the last year.

Google Street View, which provides panoramic views at street level, is currently available in more than 30 countries around the world. Other countries in the region, such as Norway, Sweden, Finland and parts of Poland, were already available and plans are underway to introduce the service in more countries.

"Driving around in cars last summer, the Street View images have now been taken up by Google Maps," said Google AdWords Community Specialist Karl Pae in a blog post on Tuesday. The images in Estonia were made by geospatial mapping company Regio, which began photographing the country last summer and finished in April.

Accused Estonian fraudster extradited to the US appears in federal court

An Estonian man has been extradited to New York to face charges he was part of a hacking gang that infected more than 4 million computers with malware as part of a massive click-fraud scheme.

Anton Ivanov is one of seven Estonian and Russian men charged in November with operating an international conspiracy that generated $14 million in phony revenue. He arrived in New York on Thursday afternoon and appeared in federal court in Manhattan for an arraignment hearing. Five other men charged in the operation are still being held in Estonia. One man accused of participating in the fraud ring remains at large.

The US Department of Justice accused the seven men of orchestrating a far-reaching botnet scam that infected both Windows and Mac computers with malware that replaced the IP addresses of legitimate sites with those controlled by the attackers. DNS Changer, as the malware was dubbed by researchers, caused compromised machines to rely on rogue DNS servers that caused victims to view websites they never would have seen on uninfected systems. The malware also prevented them from reaching antimalware sites, making it hard for them to disinfect their machines.

Skype Estonia's new head laments workforce shortage

Skype Technologies OÜ's new site leader, Tiit Paananen, says the main challenge for the company is finding qualified engineers.

From April 1, Tiit Paananen will take over from Sten Tamkivi as head of Skype's Tallinn-based development office, with Tamkivi heading to California to study business administration.

Undoubtedly Estonian IT's best-known original contribution to global communication technologies, the voice-over-internet service Skype was acquired by Microsoft in 2011. According to Paananen, 2012 will see decisive steps towards integrating the Skype platform with Microsoft's products.

"Today, Skype calls account for one-fourth of global call traffic. More than half of these are video calls, and that is the field that will see an expansion of products and services in the future," he told ERR radio.

"On the local level, the challenge will be a familiar one: how to find people who can help us put out more and better-quality products. This has always been a huge problem in Estonia and the whole region," he said.

"We already have an international office. Around 20 percent of our staff is from abroad and we have people of 30 nationalities working in our Tallinn office," he said.

Skype Technologies OÜ, currently employing 400, is one of Estonia's largest software companies and the biggest exporter of IT-related services in the country.

Erkki Sivonen

Estonia endorses deportation of 6 alleged cyber-criminals to USA

A recent judgment during the 2nd-week of February 2012 by the Estonia-based Harju County Court granted the country's authorities permission to deport 4 persons to the United States who were alleged to have committed crime on the Internet against PCs belonging to American users. Previously also, the court passed a same kind of verdict with regard to 2 other individuals, published balticbusinessnews.com dated February 21, 2012.

Currently, however, an ultimate pronouncement by the government of Estonia is expected once the court's verdict gets implemented.

In the meantime, during November 2011, the cyber-criminals' team head Vladimir Tshastshin, who designed the plan for carrying out the Internet fraud had police arrest him in Estonia via one huge collaboration between the Estonian agencies of law enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

It's alleged that Tshastshin created DNSChanger a certain PC virus that he used to infect 1m PCs across the globe. The infected PCs took end-users onto websites that fetched Tshastshin several million American dollars via the sites' advertisements.

Notably according to the FBI, the cyber-criminals, who earned money illegally with the help of malware, however, appeared efficient as well as operated like any conventional business. Their nature of dealings was somewhat complex, which thus far had not been observed or assessed.

Why it's starting to look like Estonia is Europe's startup hub

Estonia's 20-year transformation from obscure soviet satellite to rising Baltic tiger has meant it's rapidly cultivating an image as Europe's start-up hub. Yet behind the big-name technology success stories lies a more complex picture.

Skype, created by a team of Estonian software developers in 2003 and sold to Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5bn, is the most famous example. Another is Erply, dubbed the “Skype of business software” and acclaimed as one of the top-10 European start-ups to watch in 2012.

Then there's ZeroTurnaround, which designs Java tools. Since it was founded three years ago, it has accrued an impressive customer base, which includes HP, IBM and Disney. That some of the best start-ups have bordered on the eccentric has only heightened excitement about Estonia. Fits.me, a virtual fitting room provider, is a case in point. It made headlines with its robotic mannequin for online clothes retailers, which shows browsing customers how clothes fit.

Moreover, a number of Estonian companies, including Erply, Fits.me, Fortumo and GuardTime, have boosted their global profiles by opening offices in the US and UK. Impressive rankings in a host of economic reports has further bolstered Estonia's profile: World Bank figures up to 2009 suggest that Estonia has the best entrepreneurial track record in the developed world. It also ranked 16th in the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom by the Heritage Foundation, above Germany and France, and a respectable 23rd in the latest Global Innovation Index from INSEAD business school.

Virus hampering Internet use for millions

VERNAL — Computers of all makes and models sit on shelves in the back room at Techris Design, waiting to have the harmful content that's built up on their hard drives removed.

That's the bulk of the small repair shop's business.

"Ninety percent of the work that we do is virus removal and repair," owner Ted Munford said.

Munford and others in his line of work could be extremely busy in the next few weeks, thanks to a piece of malware that federal prosecutors allege was created by a group of Estonian cyber criminals.

In November, the FBI and police in Estonia wrapped up Operation Ghost Click, which resulted in the arrest and indictment of six Estonian nationals. The group had compromised millions of computers around the world with a bug known as DNSChanger.

The malicious software — known in the industry as malware — changed the Domain Name Server, or DNS, for a targeted website, redirecting Internet users from the sites they were seeking to other sites. Federal authorities say the Estonians sent Web surfers to these ghost sites, which featured specific advertisements, then collected an estimated $16 million from the advertisers for the extra Web traffic.

DNSChanger also shut down antivirus software on infected machines, exposing them to the potential for additional harm.

Estonian wanted in FBI anti-piracy megabust

Estonian citizen Andrus Nõmm is among seven individuals sought by U.S. authorities in connection with Megaupload.com, a content hosting website that was shut down by the FBI on Thursday as part of one of the largest anti-piracy actions in U.S. history.

A grand jury in Virginia indicted those running Megaupload.com and affiliated sites on January 5, charging them with engaging in a conspiracy to commit racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering, according to an FBI and U.S. Justice Department statement.

Nõmm, 32, a resident of both Turkey and Estonia, was named as the head of the group's software development division.

Four of the seven, including the enterprise's leader, Kim Dotcom, were arrested in New Zealand on January 19 based on provisional arrest warrants requested by the United States. Nõmm and two others remain at large.

The FBI said that the group constituted an international organized criminal enterprise responsible for committing “massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works,” over the course of five years. Those works included movies, often before their theatrical release, as well as music, television programs, electronic books, and business and entertainment software.

Megaupload.com was advertised as having more than 150 million registered users and accounting for 4 percent of the total traffic on the internet, the statement said.

Steve Roman

Fermeture de Megaupload : attaques en cours sur les sites des ayants-froits

L'annonce de la fermeture de Megaupload et de l'arrestation de ses administrateurs a suscité une importante vague de réactions sur Internet. De nombreux sites représentant la justice américaine ainsi que les ayant-droits de la musique et du cinéma semblent faire l'objet d'attaques par déni de service.

Suite à l'annonce de l'arrestation des responsables de Megaupload, il n'a fallu que quelques dizaines de minutes pour que se propage l'appel sur les réseaux sociaux, via les comptes associés à la mouvance « Anonymous » : depuis 22 heures, heure française, plusieurs des sites Web appartenant au gouvernement américain, ainsi qu'aux organisations qui représentent les intérêts de la musique et du cinéma sont inaccessibles, vraisemblablement victimes de ce que l'on appelle une attaque par déni de service.

Le site du département de la Justice américain (justice.gov) est actuellement inaccessible, tout comme le sont ceux de la MPAA (représentant les intérêts des studios hollywoodiens), de la RIAA (industrie de la musique) ou d'Universal (première maison de disques au monde). Idem pour le site copyright.gov. La vague touche même la France : vers minuit, le site hadopi.fr a lui aussi cédé sous les coups de boutoir des mécontents. D'autres cibles sont évoquées, comme le site du FBI, ou celui de la Maison Blanche, qui paraissent toujours en ligne vers 00h15.

Que se passe-t-il ici ? La lutte contre le téléchargement illégal et le développement de projets de loi visant à renforcer l'arsenal législatif mis à disposition des états dans ce contexte a donné naissance à un mouvement de contestation qui choisit l'arme du piratage pour faire entendre sa voix. Sa provenance n'est pas clairement identifiée, et ceux qui choisissent de s'y joindre le font sous la casquette « Anon », pour « Anonymous », devenu une véritable entité numérique.

Estonia ranked 29th in global IT competitiveness ranking

The most suitable environment for the development of the information-technologies (IT) sector is in the United States, Finland and Singapore, with Latvia dropping to 34th place in the latest global ranking, according to a report by the 'Economist Intelligence Unit' (EIU). Estonia has dropped six places in the global rankings to 29th, whilst Lithuania has dropped ten places to 41st.

Asian economies are closing the gap on the West in terms of their IT competitiveness, the study showed Tuesday, as they strengthen copyright protection and implement regulatory reforms .

While the West leads the world in terms of an attractive place for IT firms, more Asian nations are moving up the ladder, according to the EIU report.

The United States retained its position as the world's most competitive IT industry this year, followed by Finland and Singapore, writes LETA/AFP.

Europe dominated the top 20 places in a competitiveness index, which was based on criteria such as foreign investment policies, infrastructure, enrollment in higher IT education, patent registries, copyright protection and access to capital.

Compared to last year, Latvia has gone down one place in the global IT competitiveness rankings.

Nina Kolyako

Microsoft explores cooperation with Tallinn tech

Microsoft Vice President and CFO Alain Crozier's visit to Tallinn on September 7 heralds a new relationship between Estonia and the US-based software giant that extends beyond a shared love of innovation.

Crozier arrived at the Tallinn University of Technology to initiate talks with Alar Kolk, the school's vice rector, about Microsoft leading research projects with faculty and students at the university.

"Microsoft is a global trendsetter, and Alain Crozier is the man behind innovations that we use daily," Kolk told ETV. "This meeting is an important milestone marking the start of cooperation toward innovation."

Both men were vague about the specifics and nature of future research projects, though undeniably enthusiastic.

Crozier and Kolk also spoke about future internship prospects for Tallinn Tech students at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Later in the day, Crozier delivered a public talk at the university.

Andres Kahar

Cable TV should become digital by autumn 2011 in Estonia

According to a draft law by the Estonian economy and communications ministry, the current cable-analogue television has to become cable-digital television by September 1, 2012, LETA/Postimees Online reports.

Currently 51% of homes with a TV use analogue-cable TV to watch television. The share of those people is the highest among non-Estonian speaking population, a whole 87%. This means that there is no point for example for the National Broadcasting to add the possibility of a translation language to its service since technically these services would not reach a half of people, and the majority of non-Estonia speakers.

According to the bill, some communications companies that offer cable TV service have already launched the so-called digital revolution in cable networks, as the result of which the choice of TV programmes has increased, speed of home Internet has increased and free phone services have been added to the services package.

Estonia introduces community software branded with Chinese character

TALLINN - A software called "Community Tools" branded with the Chinese character "ren" (meaning "people") was introduced Friday for Estonian netizens for better online community exchanges.

Users can create forums, exchange files, post news and add events to the community calendar freely, Katri Sander, the software's project manager told Xinhua.

The software can be automatically installed through the Estonian web hosting server zone.ee without any prior technical knowledge.

It is available in both Estonian and English languages with a Finnish version currently under development, said Sander.

Many community organizations in Finland have already shown interest in adopting the software, Sander added. 

Facebook est une "machine à espionner"

A l'occasion d'une interview donnée au quotidien Russia Today, Julian Assange, le controversé fondateur du site Wikileaks, le réseau social Facebook serait « la plus terrible machine d'espionnage jamais inventée ».

Toujours assigné à résidence en Grande-Bretagne pour l'affaire de violences sexuelles qui auraient été commises en Suède en 2010, Julian Assange ne reste pas pour autant silencieux. Dans une interview publiée hier, le fondateur de Wikileaks, qui a défrayé la chronique autant que son site l'année dernière, s'en prend aux réseaux sociaux et en particulier à Facebook.

« Nous avons ici la base de données la plus complète du monde sur les gens, leur nom, leurs relation, leur adresse, leur emplacement, ainsi que leurs communications avec leurs proches, le tout accessible par les services de renseignements américains » explique-t-il ainsi à Russia Today.

Le cyberactiviste va même plus loin en expliquant que, selon lui, Facebook, mais également Google et Yahoo ont « intégré des interfaces » destinées aux services de renseignements américains. « Tout le monde devrait comprendre que, quand on ajoute des amis sur Facebook, on travaille gratuitement pour les agences américaines en contribuant à construire une base de données à leur usage ».

Pour autant, Julian Assange ne considère pas que les réseaux sociaux sont dirigés par les services de renseignements des USA, mais estime que ces derniers sont « en mesure de mettre à profit des pressions politiques et juridiques » pour les pousser à contribuer.

Chacun se fera sa propre idée sur les paroles du porte-parole de Wikileaks, site dont l'objectif principal est de dévoiler des documents confidentiels, et qui est loin d'avoir dévoilé tous ses secrets.

Audrey Oeillet

NASA computer servers vulnerable to attack

WASHINGTON — NASA's inspector general warned Monday that computer servers used by the US space agency to control spacecraft were vulnerable to cyber attack through the Internet.

"We found that computer servers on NASA's agency-wide mission network had high-risk vulnerabilities that were exploitable from the Internet," NASA inspector general Paul Martin said in an audit of NASA's network security.

"Specifically, six computer servers associated with IT assets that control spacecraft and contain critical data had vulnerabilities that would allow a remote attacker to take control of or render them unavailable," the report said.

It said a cyber attacker who managed to penetrate the network could use compromised computers to exploit other weaknesses and "severely degrade or cripple NASA's operations."

The inspector general's audit of NASA's computer security found "network servers that revealed encryption keys, encrypted passwords, and user account information to potential attackers.

"These data are sensitive and provide attackers additional ways to gain unauthorized access to NASA networks," the report said.

UK PC users hit by huge fake antivirus attack

UK Internet users were on the receiving end of a large drive-by web attack at the end of February, which attempted to push fake antivirus at least 750,000 times on a single day alone, security company AVG has said.

According to a company analysis, on Sunday 27 February, detection levels for the previously obscure Russian 'Blackhole' exploit kit suddenly spiked to 900,000 globally from a few tens of thousands that would be typical for such kits, before dropping back again.

Unusually, almost 750,000 of these detections were for UK PCs, which offers a baseline for what must have been a sustained attack several times that size against mainstream web servers frequented by users in the country.

Why relatively well-protected UK Internet users was chosen is not clear, but the campaign does appear to have been successful, compromising 600 servers, and serving nine different Java, Adobe and Microsoft exploits, including the MS-MDAC flaw from 2006. The exploit servers were based overwhelmingly in Estonia with some in the US.

AVG managed to compromise one of the servers used to control the Blackhole attack, which reported a 'load' (execution) rate for bogus antivirus software of nearly eight percent. This only shows the number of machines that ran the Fake AV alerts based on successfully serving any one of the exploits, and not how many of these users fell for the scam and paid up in the end.

Estonia sees first conviction for internet pirate

TALLINN - An  Estonian court has passed down it's first sentence for illegally downloading material from the internet and selling it on. 

Ott Speek was sentenced to one year and three months in prison for copyright infringement after he was caught downloading popular video games, movies and business software.

The case has been ongoing for more than six years. The maximum possible sentence was 3 years in prison.

Estonia continues to embrace technology

The introduction of e-billing continues to showcase the acceptance of modern technology across Estonia.

With a population of 1.3 million, the Baltic state has introduced a number of e-technology initiatives in recent years and now the government is focusing on the implementation of e-billing to help reduce costs and improve efficiency.

"The e-billing environment will make state accountancy more transparent and will also improve the work of state accountants, freeing them from the need to type all the data from bills into the system," finance minister Jurgen Ligi told AP.

Starting next month, Estonia's finance and justice ministers will switch completely over to e-billing, with the rest of the government's departments following the initiative by the end of 2011.

Finance ministry spokeswoman Sigrid Laev believes the new plans could help to reduce the cost of paper billing from around 13 euros per bill to 40 cents.

Estonia's government made internet access a basic human right in 2000.

Parties demand delay of Dot-ee registration deadline

On the final day before Estonia deletes its free-of-charge websites, political parties raised their voices in protest, asking to postpone the deadline.

Website operators had more than six months to re-register their accounts, but many administrators procrastinated, and only half of the websites have been re-registered, according to Internet Foundation chairman Marek-Andres Kauts.

In July 2010, it was announced that Estonia's online environment would be reformed. The biggest change is that dot-ee websites have to pay an annual 18.2-euro fee to the country's Internet Foundation. Sites that do not register under the Internet Foundation are to be removed on February 7. Reforms also allow citizens to register more than one website and give foreign nationals the right to register dot-ee websites.

The Estonian Internet Community - an NGO founded in October 2010 to protest the controversial dot-ee domain reform – has criticized the deletion of the 12,000 pri-dot-ee domains which gave citizens free dot-ee websites. The major political parties have recently expressed support to the NGO, demanding that the Internet Foundation put off its changeover and rethink some its policies.

Altogether, 40,000 websites will be dropped, according to Estonia's largest web-hosting company, Zone Media.

Looking for a few good hackers

Quite familiar with invasion (from both the Soviets as well as the Nazis through much of the 20th century), Estonia didn't take the cyber attacks likely. It formed the Cyber Defense League, a volunteer group of programmers, computer scientists and software engineers that in wartime would function under a unified military command. The league has become a global model for how a company should defend itself in the case of a cyber attack, such as China's attack on Google and US government websites a couple of years ago or attacks on Iran's computer systems earlier this year.

The force regularly practices weekend exercises “to prepare for possible cyber contingencies,” Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo told NPR.

"[Our] league brings together specialists in cyberdefense who work in the private sector as well as in different government agencies,” Aaviksoo said.

The cyber unit is a division of the Estonia's Total Defense League, an all-volunteer paramilitary force dedicated to maintaining the country's security and protecting it against invasion.

The cyber assault in 2007 came after a controversial decision of the Estonia government to relocate a war memorial, and authorities claim to have traced the attack to Russia, which had been angered by the decision. As one of the most wired countries in the world with 80 percent of its citizens paying taxes and banking online, Estonia had a lot to lose to cyber terrorism.

Skype triggered establishment of IT start-ups in Estonia

When Skype was sold to eBay in 2005 for a little over two billion euros, about over 100 million euros circulated in Estonia. The majority of those funds went into the new investment firm owned by former Skype engineers – Toivo Annus, Jaan Tallinn, Ahti Heinla and Priit Kasesalu, Ambient Sound Investments (ASI). With ASI, true Western venture capitalism got its sea legs in Estonia, whereas before only Allan Martinson had fit the definition of venture capitalist, the TestMarket.com writes.

In four years, ASI has provided more than 17.3 million euros of funding for more than 30 technology or Web companies. At the start of 2010, ASI still had over 50 million euros of liquid assets in its accounts, some of it in term deposits. Besides that, the four men have millions of euros in personal funds. This is too much money; it is not possible to invest all of it in Estonia, informs LETA.

About one-half of Estonia's current technology or Internet businesses – the ones expected to run like gazelles or start a revolution – got their seed capital from ASI, run by the Skype engineers.

The best-known of these ambitious players are Modesat and Guardtime.

Modesat is developing a communications technology that will make it possible to introduce ultra-high-speed broadband Internet aboard jets and high-speed trains. The company is working with the world's biggest telecom giants, such as Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens and others, and recently hired a former vice-president of Samsung as their director of technology.

The other company, Guardtime, has developed a time-stamping technology for secure digital data and is now trying to find an application for it. Asian investors led by billionaire Li Ka-shing and the Singaporean government recently invested close to 6.4 million euros into the company.

The name of Skype has been used to every possible effect to promote Estonia, and many know Estonia as the land of Skype. In the Wikipedia entry on Estonia, Skype is the only local IT company mentioned.