Ukraine has been hit by cyberattacks that are feared to be backed by President Putin of Russia. The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were targeted at the web portal of Ukraine’s ministry of defence as well as the country’s financial systems.
The scope of the DDoS attack is such that hackers flood the servers hosting a website until it becomes overloaded and shuts down.
Several major Ukrainian banks, including PrivatBank, Oschad and the State Savings Bank of Ukraine, experienced issues with transactions and mobile app.
Clients began to complain on Tuesday about difficulties using teller machines and mobile phone applications. The banks confirmed the attack but said the funds in users’ accounts had not been affected, though users said they had been temporarily unable to withdraw money or use their credit cards. Some clients of the banks were worried, as their bank balances appeared drained. By Tuesday evening it was confirmed that most financial services had been restored.
Ukrainian Ministry of defence and armed services websites were also brought down by these cyber attacks.
Ukraine has been under constant attack from Russian and Kremlin-backed hackers since February and March 2014 when Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. This event took place in the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity and is part of the wider Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
In a briefing after the attack, Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said, “This attack is unprecedented, it was prepared in advance. And the key goal of this attack is destabilization, it is to sow panic, to do everything so that certain chaos appears in our country.” “And today we know that the only country that is interested in such attacks on our state, especially against the backdrop of massive panic about a possible military invasion, the only country that is interested is the Russian Federation.”
Fedorov said the attacks came from many places and involved IP addresses from Russia, China, Uzbekistan and the Czech Republic.
Cyber espionage, damage to databases and servers, disruption to power and communications and disinformation are all now routine weapons in the Russian armoury.
It has been estimated that approximately 150,000 Russian forces were gathered on Ukraine’s northern, eastern and southern borders around the time of the attack.
Russia seems to be poking Ukraine in a bid to find weak spots, sow panic and show them what they’re capable of.