Estonia says it was targeted by "the most extensive cyberattacks since 2007" shortly after removing a Soviet-era monument in a region with a sizeable ethnic Russian majority.
Russian hacker group Killnet claimed responsibility for the attack, saying on its Telegram account on August 17 that it had blocked access to more than 200 state and private Estonian institutions, including an online citizen-identification system.
Killnet said it acted after a Soviet Tu-34 tank was removed from public display in the town of Narva to a museum on August 16.
"Yesterday, Estonia was subject to the most extensive cyber attacks it has faced since 2007," Luukas Ilves, undersecretary for digital transformation at Estonia's Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, tweeted on August 18.
However, Ilves said the denial-of-service attacks were "ineffective" and went "largely unnoticed" by the general population.
"With some brief and minor exceptions, websites remained fully available throughout the day," he added. "E-Estonia is up and running," Ilves wrote, using a moniker that the Baltic country, seen as a pioneer of digitization in Europe, has adopted.
Estonia's roughly 1.3 million citizens can complete almost all administrative procedures over the Internet.
