Hacker group Fancy Bear is believed to have staged at least three separate attacks in Montenegro in 2017, Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) reports and three prominent international cybersecurity companies, Fire Eye, Trend Micro and ESET, agree. US intelligence services believe that Fancy Bear, also titled by researchers as APT28, is a cyber-espionage group linked to the Russian intelligence service GRU, which was behind hacking the US Democratic National Committee among other. BIRN reports that cyberattacks were possibly part of a broader plan to destabilize Montenegro, as Russia was displeased with Montenegro's NATO accession. The attacks occurred in January, February and June 2017, using spear-phishing emails to tempt Montenegrin institution officials to open messages which mention specific topics relevant to them. The victims enabled a virus to enter their computers by clicking on the link or attached document.