This Cyberattack Took Down Country-Wide Internet Services In A Day

A vicious cyberattack has taken place in Georgia, and this country now is having to suffer its massive consequences. Starting Oct 28^th, intruders started to strike and deface at least 15,000 websites hosted on Pro-Service, an internet provider in the country. Attacked websites include not only easy-to-attack sites but also government portals of national administration, newspapers, and other private companies. Each site got a defacement displaying a photo of Mikheil Saakashvili, who is the former President of the country, along with a short text in English, saying that “I’ll be back”. More serious, the attack also targeted to three TV stations, and two of which were taken down, including TV Maestro and TV Imedi.

Accordingly, nearly half of all sites had been restored last morning, Oct 29^th. Since then, the question about the culprits behind this attack hasn’t got an exact answer yet. Note that Georgia had to face a bunch of attacks in 2008 during its war with Russia, and the recent attack reminisces the past due to its scale and focus as well. In fact, Saakashvili is considered a pro-Western, so there’re many doubts raised over Russia’s involvement this time. If Russia wants to fuel social tensions, as usual, it won’t likely use such an ex-leader. In addition, Georgia’s latest presidential election ended up in Oct 2018, so gaining any political effect from that doesn’t seem to happen immediately.

Though attackers are still hiding away, the cyberattack drew a line in the weaknesses of cybersecurity systems in Georgia as the attack wasn’t that sophisticated and the country sometimes depends on Russian online services.