MIA: Foreign cyber-attack carried out to obtain information from Lugar laboratory databases
By Natalia Kochiashvili
Friday, September 4
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia has issued a statement on a cyber attack from a foreign country, as a result of which the attackers obtained and disseminated important medical documents and pandemic related medical records stored in the databases of the Richard Lugar Laboratory Research Center.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the cyber attack was carried out on September 1st, 2020, on the computer system of the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Labor, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia by one of the foreign special services.
“Part of the authentic documentation obtained as a result of illegal access to the computer system is currently uploaded on one of the foreign websites and is available to the mass user. Also, the website uploads falsified documents, which are deliberately falsified to intimidate, confuse, and distrust the public.”
According to the evidence obtained at this stage, the cyber attack was carried out by one of the foreign special services.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia will appeal to the relevant services of the partner countries to provide effective assistance in the rapid and effective investigation of this complex and specific crime.
The Cybercrime Division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has launched an investigation into the unauthorized access of the computer system of the Ministry under Article 284 of the Criminal Code of Georgia.
Shvitkin told RIA Novosti that Novichok is a group of poisonous substances that Russia doesn’t produce, however similar labs in Georgia and the United States produce it.
On September 2nd, the German government announced that a neural-paralytic substance had been found in the blood of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
“We do not release such chemicals on our territory, as far as information is concerned, such weapons, such poisonous substances are on the territory of Georgia from the US, laboratories and the United States," Shvitkin told RIA Novosti.
He said Russia was ready to intervene in the investigation if necessary, adding that the Russian Prosecutor General's Office had asked Germany to provide expert answers.
“The allegations against us are absurd and do not contain any arguments, no evidence. Once again, our country is being attacked, as if to continue the accusations of Skripal poisoning, as if Navalny and responsibility were being transferred to us,” said the Russian Duma deputy.
Alexei Navalny fell ill on a plane while flying from Tomsk to Moscow on August 20th. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where the politician was taken to hospital. He was later transferred to Berlin. Navalny, 44, is in a coma in a hospital in Berlin.
Commenting on the allegations made by Duma deputy Yuri Shvitkin, Irakli Sesiashvili, chairman of the Georgian parliament's defense and security committee, said the attack on Lugar's lab was part of a Russian hybrid war that discredited relations between Georgia and the United States.
“Lugar Laboratory is unique not only in Georgia but in the whole Transcaucasia and it only serves public health,” Sesiashvili commented.
According to him, we periodically see targeted attacks by Russian officials on this laboratory. These are disinformation statements aimed at discrediting the relations between Georgia and the US on the one hand, and the existence of certain biological threats in Georgia on the other hand, which is complete absurdity and nonsense.
“This is part of a hybrid war, about which we always have a very sharp statement, as the US embassy has repeatedly stated,” said Sesiashvili.
According to the First Vice-Speaker of the Parliament Giorgi Volski, the statement of the Deputy Chairman of the Defense Committee of the Russian Duma, “is an obvious political demarche, threats, as well as borderization and kidnapping of people.”
Note, that Novichok was created in the Soviet Union and its research continued in Russia. Its use as a substance of nervous action for combat purposes is prohibited.
As for Lugar Laboratory, the US-funded Lugar Public Health Center in Tbilisi has been the target of disinformation by the Kremlin and its affiliates or media outlets in Tbilisi for years. Russian propaganda at various times claimed that Americans were conducting experiments on Georgian citizens; Biological weapons are made; Zika virus-infected mosquitoes or Asian pheasants are spread in Abkhazia; In the Tskhinvali region - swine flu.
Amiran Gamkrelidze, Director General of the NCDC suggests that the purpose of the cyber-attack on Lugar's laboratory was not to obtain information, since it’s public.
He recalled the accusation of Shvitkin. “Because Lugar is a Georgian-American project, they want to stir up with Novichok. I am directly saying that this is another nonsense, another gossip, another very cheap 'trick' that they want you to somehow discuss,” said Gamkrelidze.
Paata Imnadze, Deputy General Director of the Georgian National Center for Disease Control and Public Health, responded to the cyber attack on Lugar's laboratory in a conversation with Rustavi 2.
“I'm not afraid of anything, because we have no secret experiments...We have no time for this, we have work to do. We are fighting COVID, that's our business now,” Imnadze commented.
