Romania was target of 'aggressive hybrid Russian attacks' during elections, security council says

Documents declassified by Romania's top security council on Wednesday said the country was a target of "aggressive hybrid Russian attacks" in a period of consecutive elections.

Romanians will vote in a presidential election runoff on Sunday that could see Calin Georgescu, a far-right, pro-Russian critic of NATO, defeat pro-European centrist Elena Lasconi, an outcome that might isolate Romania in the West.

Having polled in single digits before the first presidential election round on Nov. 24, Georgescu - who wants to end Romanian support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion - surged to a victory that raised questions over how such a surprise had been possible in a European Union and NATO member state.

In one of the unclassified documents, Romania's intelligence agency said Georgescu was massively promoted on social media platform TikTok through coordinated accounts, recommendation algorithms and paid promotion. Georgescu has declared zero funds spent in the campaign.

The intelligence service also said access data for official Romanian election websites was published on Russian cyber crime platforms. The access data was probably procured by targeting legitimate users or by exploiting the legitimate training server, the agency said.

It added that it had identified over 85,000 cyber attacks which aimed to exploit system vulnerabilities.

Russia has denied any interference in Romania's election campaigns.

"The attacks continued intensively including on election day and the night after elections," the agency said in a declassified document.

"The operating mode and the amplitude of the campaign leads us to conclude the attacker has considerable resources specific to an attacking state."