Russia Accused by Ukraine for Major Cyber Attacks

“Kyiv has previously accused Moscow of orchestrating large cyber attacks as part of a “hybrid war” against Ukraine, which Russia denies. However, a statement from Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council did not disclose who it believed organized the attacks or give any details about the effect the intrusions may have had on Ukrainian cybersecurity.” reported The Reuters agency. 

The Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council however has not released a statement that states that the Ukrainian Cyber Security is believed to coordinated or provides specifics about the consequences that intruders may have had. According to a contact, the attacks began on Feb. 18 and threatened web pages belonging to Ukrainian Security Service, the Council itself, and several other state agencies and strategic businesses. 

“It was revealed that addresses belonging to certain Russian traffic networks were the source of these coordinated attacks,” the Council said. 

“The council added the attacks attempted to infect vulnerable government web servers with a virus that covertly made them part of a botnet used for so-called distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on other resources,” concludes Reuters. 

The Council reported that these attacks are intended to infect compromised state web servers with malware that has transformed them into part of a DDoS network. A DDoS attack is a cyber attack in which hackers aim to inundate a network with an extraordinary amount of information traffic so as to paralyze it. 

“It is obvious that it’s connected with the latest pro-active efforts by the Service toward protecting national interests and countering Russia, which has been waging its hybrid war against Ukraine, including in the information domain,” the official reported. Since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and participated in a continuing war in the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine have been at the loggerhead.