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Romania's Supreme Council of National Defense has declassified documents that detail a massive campaign by Russia to aid the country's far-right presidential candidate Calin Georgescu. The campaign involved cyberattacks and manipulation of social media algorithms, reports the Financial Times.
According to Romanian intelligence services, “cybercrime platforms of Russian origin” obtained access to Romanian election websites and staged over 85,000 cyberattacks on them, including on election day itself. The attacks were aimed at stealing data, modifying content, or blocking access to information. The attacks were carried out using the latest anonymization techniques. “The modus operandi, as well as the scale of the cyber campaign, suggests that the attacker has significant resources,” the council stated.
In addition, Romanian intelligence agencies have revealed that Russia organized a large-scale network of TikTok accounts aimed at supporting Georgescu. Such content was distributed without being labeled as political advertising, thus violating TikTok policy — and Romanian electoral law. As a result, ByteDance, the social network owner, said on Tuesday that it had deleted a cluster of such accounts. TikTok, by its own admission, received at least $381,000 for this campaign. Earlier, Georgescu had claimed that he spent nothing on his election campaign. The network of pro-Georgescu accounts was coordinated through Discord and Telegram chats, according to Romanian intelligence services.
On Dec. 2, Romania's Constitutional Court approved the results of the first round of the presidential election. In the second round, scheduled for Dec. 8, Georgescu —- who promotes anti-globalization and anti-European ideas, believes Romania should withdraw from NATO, and calls for an end of support for Ukraine in its war with Russia — will compete against Elena Lasconi, a candidate from the liberal and pro-European Save Romania Union.