2,000 Georgia websites hit by massive cyber-attack

TBILISI: Some 2,000 websites in Georgia, including those of the president, courts, and media were hacked in a massive cyber atack on Monday, officials and media said.

They displayed a photo of Georgia’s exiled former president Mikheil Saakashvili with an inscription “I’ll be back!” Georgia’s Interpress news agency reported.

Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili’s website was “atacked by hackers this aternoon,” her spokeswoman said.

“Law enforcement agencies are investigating the incident,” Sopho Jajanashvili said.

Interpress said the website for Georgia’s general jurisdiction courts as well as websites of a number of government agencies, NGOS and media outlets were also hit by cyber attacks on Monday.

Up to 2,000 sites are believed to have been affected.

The atack also affected servers of Georgia’s two major broadcasters, Maestro and Imedi TV, temporarily sending the television stations off the air.

Georgia’s interior ministry said it had launched an investigation.

“We still haven’t full access to our computer systems,” Andro Lashkhi, a lawyer for Imedi TV, told journalists.

In 2008, in the run-up to and during the war between Russia and Georgia, Tbilisi accused Moscow of an all-out cyber atack against the websites of nearly all government agencies and the country’s leading banks.

Russia denied the allegations, but said that “individuals in Russia” might have been responsible.

Western cyber-analysts alleged that Russia’s security services had likely played a key role in organising those atacks.

The United States Cyber Consequences Unit said the 2008 atacks highlighted the need for international cooperation on cyber security.

The two countries’ brief but bloody conflict marked the culmination of the spiralling tensions over Georgia’s bid to forge closer ties with the West, which has long angered Tbilisi’s Soviet-era master Russia.