For more than a decade, Russian hackers have tormented the country's neighbors, bombarding Estonian websites with junk traffic and even triggering blackouts in Ukraine. As long as Russia has kept those relentless, disruptive cyberattacks within its own region, the West has mostly turned a blind eye. But as the US seeks to head off any digital meddling in its own upcoming election, the State Department is trying something different: Calling out Russia for a broad-scale act of digital sabotage that hit the country of Georgia last fall.
State Department officials today issued a statement blaming the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU for cyberattacks that hit Georgia in October. The onslaught took down or defaced thousands of websites, and even disrupted the broadcasts of two television stations. Specifically, administration officials tell WIRED that US and allied intelligence agencies have attributed the assault to the GRU's Main Center for Special Technology, or GTsST, which the State Department also explicitly linked for the first time in its statement to the notorious Russian hacker group known as Sandworm. The US had previously tied that same group to the destructive NotPetya worm that spread from Ukraine in 2017, causing $10 billion in damage, and the
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