How Russia’s Attack On Georgia Sparked Kremlin-Cybercrime Connection

Early this month, Meduza, a Riga-based online newspaper featuring independent reporting on Russia, published a detailed and fascinating inside look at ongoing cooperation between criminal hackers and Moscow. With the news full of stories about Russia's U.S. election hacking and the Mueller probe, Meduza's article stands out for its intelligent investigation and a thorough historical perspective.

“Meduza special correspondent Daniil Turovsky looks at the history of Russia’s cyberwar with Georgia, and traces its links to the hacking of the Democratic Party in the United States and the arrest of several Russian Federal Security Service agents in 2016."

In the beginning, the report recalls activities of patriotic hackers who have conducted cyber-attacks for the national cause of their own initiative. It explains that “the Russian authorities have been relying on intelligence gathered by these ‘patriotic groups’ for at least a decade", with the author tracing their activity way back to the second phase of the Chechen war and the attacks on websites operated by Chechen separatists labelled as terrorists. Meduza writes that over time, the hackers turned their attention to the country's domestic politics, stepping up efforts to discredit the anti-Kremlin opposition and independent media outlets. But it’s Russia’s military intervention in Georgia in 2008 that solidified the relationship between the Kremlin and cybercriminals.

“Several Russian-speaking hackers told Meduza that the 2008 Russo-Georgian war catalyzed the Russian intelligence community’s cooperation with ‘patriotic hackers,’ transforming these criminals into valuable state assets. Ever since, Meduza’s sources say, the authorities have regularly recruited hackers to work for them, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes under the threat of criminal prosecution.”