The websites of Ukraine’s defense ministry and armed forces, as well as two Ukrainian banks, were hit by a cyberattack on Tuesday, according to statements from government agencies.
It was unclear who was behind the hacking. When asked by CNN who’s responsible for the attack, Victor Zhora, a deputy chairman at the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine (SSSCIP), answered: “It’s too early to attribute.”
Ukraine authorities are under cyber attacks
The case comes amid reports that Russia has amassed about 150,000 troops near Ukraine’s border, as reported on Thursday by United States President Joe Biden, and as officials from the United States and other countries warn that a new Russian invasion could occur at any minute. Russia has denied it is moving to invade Ukraine.
SSSCIP reported a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, in which phony traffic floods a website to prevent access to it. DDoS attacks are simple and inexpensive to conduct. While they may be irritating, one does not need sophisticated knowledge to conduct such an attack.
According to the authorities, the websites of the banks PrivatBank and Oschadbank were restored at 7:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. ET) on Tuesday evening. Journalists in Ukraine reported difficulties with accessing government agencies’ websites throughout Tuesday night, according to CNN.
The Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from which the hackers are flooding Ukrainian websites with traffic were still being monitored by Ukrainian government authorities, according to Zhora.
Matt Tait, a cybersecurity expert and former information security specialist with the UK government’s signals intelligence agency, said the DDoS attack appears to “be part of a general campaign of harassment and demoralization against the public encouraged by the Russian government.”
The DDoS attack, according to Matt Tait, a cybersecurity specialist and former information security officer for the UK government’s signals intelligence agency, looks like “to be part of a general campaign of harassment and demoralization against the public encouraged by the Russian government.”
“That said, this is quite distinct from military/kinetic cyberattacks that might be used in direct conflicts, such as to disable utilities or achieve direct military objectives. For this reason, I would urge caution in seeing this event as a direct precursor to invasion,” Taid added, according to CNN.
Russia routinely denies conducting cyber assaults. Last month, Ukraine’s government websites were hit by a separate cyber assault. Ukrainian officials alleged Russian and Belarusian involvement, but the investigation has not named those countries as suspects.
