• The coordinated attack that started around Aug. 20 crippled online government information platforms.
• It put Montenegro’s essential infrastructure, including banking, water and power systems, at risk.
• The attack capped a string of cyberattacks since Russia invaded Ukraine in which hackers targeted European nations.

At the govt headquarters in NATO-member Montenegro, the computers are unplugged, the web is switched off and the state’s main websites are down. The blackout comes amid an enormous cyberattack against the small Balkan state which officials say bears the hallmark of pro-Russian hackers and its security services.

The coordinated attack that started around Aug. 20 crippled online government information platforms and put Montenegro’s essential infrastructure, including banking, water and electricity power systems, at high risk.

The attack, described by experts as unprecedented in its intensity and therefore the longest in the tiny nation’s recent history, capped a string of cyberattacks since Russia invaded Ukraine during which hackers targeted Montenegro and other European nations, most of them NATO members.

Sitting at his desk in Montenegro’s capital, Podgorica, ahead of a blackened PC screen, Defense Minister Rasko Konjevic said officialdom were advised by cyber experts, including a team of FBI investigators that was dispatched to the Balkan country , to travel offline for security reasons.

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“We are faced with serious challenges related to the cyberattack for about 20 days, and therefore the entire state system, the system of state administration, and therefore the system of services to citizens are functioning at a rather restrictive level,” Konjevic told The Associated Press.

He said experts from several countries try to help restore the Montenegro government’s computer system and find proof of who is behind the attack.

Montenegro officials said the attack that crippled the government’s digital infrastructure was likely administered by a Russian-speaking ransomware gang that generally operates without Kremlin interference as long as it doesn’t target Russian allies. The gang, called Cuba ransomware, claimed responsibility for a minimum of part of the Montenegro cyberattack, during which it created a special virus for the attack called Zerodate.

Montenegro’s Agency for National Security blamed the attack squarely on Russia.

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