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Parliamentary committee chairman: Groups linked to Russia carried out on Azerbaijan's media resources

02 May 2025 15:57 (UTC +04:00)

As a result of the examination, whether the technical methods used during the attack or the behavioral models, it was determined that the cyber-attacks belonged to the APT29 (“Cozy Bear”) group (other names are Midnight Blizzard, the Dukes), which is associated with Russia, the chairman of the Temporary Commission against Foreign Interference and Hybrid Threats of Milli Majlis (Azerbaijani Parliament) Ramid Namazov said during the public discussions organized by the mentioned parliamentary commission on the topic “February 20 Attacks on Azerbaijani Media Resources: From Cyber Interference to Disinformation”, APA reports.

Ramid Namazov noted that this group is an organized group that carries out particularly significant cyber operations: “The activities of APT29, which is engaged in cyber espionage, mainly target government agencies, foreign diplomatic missions, as well as politics, defense, energy, media and other critical sectors. As for their working methods, they use many methods and cyber-interference tools. One of them is to enter the target's systems long in advance, consolidate there and take action when necessary. It is this method they apply and their politically motivated motives that distinguish them from other cybercriminal groups. Thus, according to research on February 20 of this year, the cyber espionage group called APT29 has been completely capturing the media resources in their systems, which they have been secretly operating in for about 2-3 years. As a result of our cyberpsychological analysis, it is clear where the motive for the attack came from. The motive was the Russian Information and Cultural Center - "Russian House", which was not registered as a legal entity in our country and was terminated on February 3 due to serious violations of the requirements of the legislation, and the representative office of "Rossiya Segodnya" (Sputnik) in Azerbaijan, which was then in talks about its liquidation. It is precisely because of these processes that this politically motivated cyber interference incident occurred."