Russia hacked government agencies in Georgia to spy on them - Bloomberg

For several years, Russian intelligence agencies have been collecting internal information about the Georgian government and large companies in the country. This was made possible by a large-scale cyber espionage campaign.

This was reported by RBC-Ukraine with reference to Bloomberg.

According to the publication, the Russian GRU and the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation gained access to the internal systems of a number of government agencies and large companies in 2017-2020.

In particular, on the eve of the 2020 parliamentary elections, the GRU hacked the Central Election Commission of Georgia, several major Georgian media outlets, including the country's most popular TV channels Imedi and Maestro, as well as several IT systems of the Georgian national railway company.

It is also known that FSB-linked hackers conducted a covert operation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia to gain access to the emails of Georgian officials and collect data stored in Georgian embassies around the world.

The hackers are believed to be part of a Russian group known as Turla. They also tried to access the data of seven Georgian officials. These include the current deputy foreign minister of Georgia and the Georgian ambassadors to the United States and the EU.

Author - Dmitriy Levchenko, 22/10/2024