Russian hackers attack Armenian state agencies Cyber specialists' statement

Co-founders of the Armenian CyberHUB-AM group Artur Papyan and Samvel Martirosyan have said that Russian hackers are operating against Armenia.

“For many years Armenia thought that if there was a cyber attack, Azerbaijan or Türkiye could make it. However, now experts are talking about attacks carried out from other countries. For at least one decade, Russian hackers focus on the Armenian military, diplomats, politicians and journalists,” Papyan and Martirosyan said in an interview with the Armenian media, Caliber.Az reports.

According to the research conducted by CyberHUB-AM group co-founder Samvel Martirosyan, the most active of these state hacker groups is the Russian APT 27 team. Operating in Armenia, the APT 27 group has relations with the Russian military intelligence. For example, APT 27 focused on the Armenian military with a domain very similar to mil.am, where they set up a fake rnil.am email login page. The same trick was used for the Armenian Foreign Ministry.

“Russian hacker groups are intensively operating in Armenia. Many tools have been used over the years. We saw that they repeatedly hack or tried to hack the websites of the ministries, some sectors of the Armenian economy, for example, the Ministry of Environment, consulates, and embassies. That is, it is quite logical that the most important spheres were considered as part of exploring Armenia as a whole. We have to accept the fact that Russian cyber units, all over the world, always act systematically and try to have data and information in which they are interested. It's like an axiom. It is also obvious that there will be more activity now, because there is a certain tension, and therefore the Russians will be more interested in obtaining additional information in all possible ways,” Papyan added.