Delays on the Internets

I had some difficulty accessing several of my favorite rss feeds this morning. My reader ( Windows Live Mail ) displayed one interesting title, “Estonia will host NATO cybercommand” but displayed a message that stated the page could not be displayed, possibly due to site maintenance.

Joshua Keating’s blog

Delays on the Internets
Wed, 05/14/2008 - 3:48pm

As you may have noticed, we’re currently experiencing periodic delays and site outages. We believe this is due to an enormous upsurge in traffic to the Top Public Intellectuals list. We’re working on addressing the problem and should have things running normally again soon.

Thanks for your patience. 

I was more than a little interested, I knew that Estonia was not only the most ‘wired’ European country, but had suffered greatly last year at the hands of cyber-criminals. The entire nation had been taken ‘off-line’ for several weeks in an emergency response to the ‘Denial of Service’ attacks.

A few minutesa later, the blog was displayed and after I scanned the ‘Morning Brief’ I read yesterdays post;

Estonia will host NATO cybercommand

Wed, 05/14/2008 - 4:41pm

Seven NATO states have signed on to support a new cyber-defense facility in Tallinn, Estonia. Estonia, nicknamed E-stonia, is one of the most wired countries in the world and has good reason to be concerned about a cyberterrorism. Last year, a massive botnet attack launched from inside Russia crippled the country’s infrastructure for days after the government controversially took down a Soviet-era monument.

No word yet on whether “the Vetted” are involved in this new venture.

I had to ask myself if the Foreign Policy site wasn’t under assault! I will be monitoring that site for the next few days to see if they post any information that might explain the temporary crash.