The U.S., U.K. and Estonia condemned last year’s cyber attacks against Georgia, part of the former Soviet Union, by Russian military intelligence today during a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council. The meeting marked the first time cyber attacks were brought up in the council as its own specific item.
Flanked by his fellow U.N. ambassadors from the U.S. and U.K., Estonian Ambassador Sven Jurgenson said it was clear who carried out the cyber attack.
“We are clear that Russia's military intelligence service, the G.R.U, conducted the cyber attacks in attempt to sow discord and disrupt the lives of ordinary Georgian people. These cyber attacks are part of Russia's long-running campaign of hostile and destabilizing activity against Georgia and are part of a wider pattern of malign activity.”
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Jurgenson continued: “These actions clearly contradict Russia's attempts to claim it is a responsible actor in cyberspace and demonstrate a continuing pattern of reckless G.R.U cyber operations against a number of countries. Irresponsibility in cyberspace is detrimental to all of us.”
Although the attack occurred in October, Georgian authorities blamed Russia’s GRU last month. The Associated Press reported the large-scale cyber-attack was aimed at the Tbilisi government and private organizations with the goal of destabilizing the country.
The attack centered on disrupting two of Georgia’s major TV networks and it also disrupted some two thousand websites both government and privately owned sites.
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