How Russian Intelligence Agents “Hacked” the Whole of Georgia – is the title of an article published by Bloomberg, whose content is based on documents and technical reports it obtained.
Bloomberg claims Russian hackers penetrated Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance and the National Bank, and hacked key energy and telecommunications suppliers.
In addition, the publication writes that in 2017-2020, Russian intelligence gained access to Georgian electricity companies, oil terminals, media platforms and government agencies.
“The intelligence campaign that has been going on for several years leading up to the 2020 election allowed Russia to eavesdrop on the country it wants to control. Some of the hackers worked from offices in Moscow during regular business hours to monitor their targets in real time,” the agency wrote.
The article alleges that the main division of the Russian General Staff hacked the Central Election Commission of Georgia and several media organizations, including Imedi and Maestro, gained access to email accounts, and had access to the IT system of the Georgian Railway for more than two years.
The news agency says hackers connected to the Federal Security Service of Russia conducted a covert operation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia over several months in order to count the emails of high-ranking officials and collect data stored in Georgian embassies around the world.
“The Georgian authorities were informed about some Russian hacking attacks by their Western colleagues, but it is unclear whether they have taken any retaliatory measures,” European officials told the publication, noting that Russia had conducted operations on a similar scale not so long ago.
The publication writes that the operation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia was carried out by the hacker group Turla, which operates from a facility located in Ryazan. From April 2020 to January 2021, hackers focused on obtaining the data of seven Georgian officials, including the current Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Georgian ambassadors to the US and EU. Their targets were also the consulates of Georgia in various countries, including Cyprus, the Baltic states, Russia, South Korea, Azerbaijan and Canada.
Bloomberg claims that in November-December 2020, Turla penetrated the network of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia and stole data 114 times, collecting approximately 2.1 gigabytes of data.
