PODGORICA, Montenegro — A rapid deployment team of FBI cyber experts is heading to Montenegro to investigate a massive, coordinated attack on the tiny Balkan nation’s government and its services, the country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs announced Wednesday.
The announcement came as the government’s main websites — including the ministries of defense, finance and interior — remained unreachable. Officials said they were offline “for security reasons.”
The ministry called the FBI assistance “another confirmation of the excellent cooperation between the United States of America and Montenegro and a proof that we can count on their support in any situation.”
Montenegro’s Agency for National Security blamed the attack, which began late last week, squarely on Russia, though without providing evidence. A combination of ransomware and distributed denial-of-service attacks, the onslaught disrupted government services and prompted the country’s electrical utility to switch to manual control.
A cybercriminal extortion gang claimed responsibility for at least part of the attack, infecting a parliamentary office with ransomware known as Cuba, which the cybersecurity firm Profero has found to include Russian speakers. Russian-speaking cybercriminals generally operate without Kremlin interference, as long as they don’t target friendly nations.
Officials said no ransom demand has been made.
Montenegrin officials said Russia has a strong motive for such an attack because the Balkan state, once considered a strong Russian ally, joined NATO in 2017 despite strong opposition from the Kremlin. It has also joined Western sanctions against Moscow because of its invasion of Ukraine in February.
On Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Podgorica issued a rare alert saying the attack could include “disruptions to the public utility, transportation (including border crossings and airport), and telecommunication sectors.”
Other Eastern European states deemed enemies of Russia have recently also sustained cyberattacks, mostly nuisance-level denial-of-service campaigns, which render websites unreachable by flooding them with junk data but don’t damage data. Targets have included networks in Moldova, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Albania.
But the attack against Montenegro’s infrastructure seemed more sustained and extensive, with targets including water supply systems, transportation services and online government services, among many others.
Government officials in the…
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