Britain criticises Russia over suspected involvement in Georgia cyberattacks

Homeland February 25, 2020

The British government has released a statement criticising Russia’s GRU over its suspected involvement in cyberattacks in Georgia.

The government has released a statement condemning the GRU after the NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre) surmised that it was likely responsible for cyberattacks against Georgia. The UK’s NCSC assesses that the GRU was almost certainly (95% +) responsible for defacing websites, cyber-attacks and interruption to TV channels in Georgia in October 2019.

The cyber programme responsible for these disruptions is known in open source variously as the Sandworm team, BlackEnergy Group, Telebots, and VoodooBear. This is the first significant example of the GRU using cyber-attacks to disrupt or destroy since late 2017.

Dominic Raab, Foreign Secretary, said: “The GRU’s reckless and brazen campaign of cyber-attacks against Georgia, a sovereign and independent nation, is totally unacceptable.”

“The Russian government has a clear choice: continue this aggressive pattern of behaviour against other countries, or become a responsible partner which respects international law.”

“The UK will continue to expose those who conduct reckless cyber-attacks and work with our allies to counter the GRU’s menacing behaviour.”

This Unit of the GRU was allegedly responsible for:

BlackEnergy: December 2015 shut off part of Ukraine’s electricity grid, with 230,000 people losing power for between 1 to 6 hours
Industroyer: December 2016 shut off part of Ukraine’s electricity grid, also known as CrashOverride. It resulted in a fifth of Kyiv losing power for an hour. It is the first known malware designed specifically to disrupt electricity grids
NotPetya: June 2017 destructive cyber-attack targeting the Ukrainian financial, energy and government sectors and affecting other European and Russian businesses
BadRabbit: October 2017 ransomware encrypted hard drives and rendered IT inoperable. This caused disruption including to the Kyiv metro, Odessa airport, Russia’s central bank and 2 Russian media outlets.

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cyber attack Foreign Secretary Government GRU malware NCSC Russia