Ukraine has been hit by a “massive” cyber-attack, forcing a lot more than a dozen federal government web-sites offline, it has been documented today.
The attack, which also qualified the Uk, US and Swedish embassies in Ukraine, is suspected to have been perpetrated by Russian threat actors amid significant tensions involving the two nations.
The web sites taken offline include the Ukrainian ministry of international affairs and the instruction ministry. Just before going down, a sinister information appeared stating: “Ukrainians! … All info about you has come to be community. Be afraid and expect worse. It is your past, present and upcoming.”
The message also reproduced the Ukrainian flag and map crossed out and referenced “historical land.” This appeared in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and Polish.
The Guardian quoted the Ukrainian overseas ministry’s spokesperson, Oleg Nikolenko, who said: “As a result of a substantial cyber-attack, the internet site of the ministry of international affairs and other federal government companies are briefly down.
“Our experts have currently started off restoring the function of IT systems, and the cyber-law enforcement has opened an investigation.”
Ukraine’s SBU security assistance reported that no personal data was leaked in the attack.
The incident has come amid heightened tensions in the location, with the Kremlin demanding assurances that Ukraine will not be a part of Nato. Russia has deployed 100,000 troops to the border with Ukraine.
The EU’s leading diplomat, Josep Borrell, condemned the assaults, stating: “We are heading to mobilize all our methods to support Ukraine to deal with this. Sadly, we understood it could transpire.”
He extra: “I cannot blame any individual as I have no evidence. But we can think about.”
Commenting on the story, Anthony Gilbert, cyber menace intelligence direct at Bridewell Consulting, claimed: “At the moment it is unclear how the attack occurred or who is powering it, but presented the recent situation, it’s hugely most likely it was politically charged as there appears to be no economic enthusiasm. The attackers possibly wished to give a warning or ignite civil unrest and spread even more undercurrents of no confidence in the government.”
Toby Lewis, international head of risk examination at Darktrace, mentioned it was also early to soar to conclusions about the nature of the attack and its perpetrators. “We really should be careful close to labeling this as a ‘sophisticated’ attack. Some cyber-assaults are extra thriving than some others some are superior and others significantly less so. A distributed denial of services (DDoS) attack, for case in point, which is an try to provide down web sites or networks by frustrating the webserver with internet targeted visitors, is not particularly sophisticated and somewhat uncomplicated to mitigate.
“Some of the web site defacements, these types of as individuals still left on the education and learning internet site and the ministry of international affairs, are intended to mimic ‘nationalist/separatist groups’ with claims that the attack was completed in the name of the UPA (Ukrainian Separatist Military), which has not existed for around 50 several years. Attribution is not possible to do with digital data by itself, and it is not unlikely that this is a untrue flag to divert notice absent from the true perpetrators, to stir up unrest or simply impression the believability of the site entrepreneurs.”
Russia has previously been blamed for cyber-attacks on Ukraine in latest yrs. These involve attacks in 2015 and 2016 that took out huge sections of the country’s energy grids.
Some parts of this article are sourced from:
www.infosecurity-journal.com