The small country of Georgia was hit by a cyberattack on Monday, knocking the national TV station and 2,000 websites offline in the nation's largest-ever cyberattack.
A local web-hosting provider, Pro-Service, took the blame, claiming one of its servers that powers websites for media organizations, state agencies, and the private sector, was the target of the attack. The attack resulted in roughly 15,000 subscribers of website servers on the Pro-Service server crashing.
In the attack hackers replaced normal functionality with an image of the former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili with the words "I'll be back", leading many to believe that the attack was politically motivated. Social media speculates that Russian hackers are behind the attack, but no hard evidence has been presented.
Upon discovery, Pro-Service worked alongside the Ministry of Internal Affairs and security experts to mitigate the situation. By Monday at 8 PM local time in Georgia, service had been restored to 50 percent of the impacted website. The company hopes to have all sites functioning normally by end of day Tuesday.
Details on how hackers breached Pro-Service have not been made available, but some sites were hit harder than others.
Georgia experienced similar cyberattacks during the five-day war of 2008 between Russian and Georgia over disputed territory in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
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