Ukraine is under a cyberattack. The websites of the defense ministry and armed forces including two banks were hit. State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine (SSSCIP) is investigating the attack. Deputy chairman Victor Zhora said “It’s too early to attribute” responsibility.
According to US President Joe Biden, Russia has massed an estimated 150,000 troops along Ukraine’s border. US authorities have warned that a new Russian invasion may happen at any time. Russia has rejected any intention of invading Ukraine.
The incident was characterized by SSSCIP as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. It involves flooding a website with bogus traffic in order to prevent access to it. DDoS assaults are inexpensive and simple to carry out. They can be disruptive, but they don’t always have to be sophisticated.
Access to the banks’ websites — PrivatBank and Oschadbank — had been restored by 7:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. ET), according to Ukrainian officials. Tuesday night there were troubles accessing military agency websites.
According to Zhora, Ukrainian government authorities are “continuing to monitor and shut off” the IP addresses from which the hackers are flooding Ukrainian websites with traffic.
DDoS assaults are tough to track down because hackers can fake their geolocation to appear to be in a place they aren’t.
The DDoS assault looks to be “part of a wider campaign of harassment and demoralization against the public promoted by the Russian government,” according to Matt Tait, a cybersecurity expert and former information security specialist with the UK government’s signals intelligence agency.
Russia consistently denies carrying out cyberattacks.
Last month, a separate hack targeted Ukrainian government websites. Officials in Ukraine have indicated Russian and Belarusian participation, although the hack has yet to be officially pinned on those nations.