Several Ukrainian Banks And Government Websites Have Been Hit By Cyberattacks As The Crisis Escalates

A newly found malicious software in Ukraine has struck hundreds of systems as part of what Ukrainian officials claimed was an intensified wave of hacks directed against the country.

ESET stated that the data erasing application had been “installed on hundreds of machines in the country,” implying that the attack had been planned for several months.

It is unknown who is to blame for the virus, but suspicion fell on Russia, which has been accused of waging data-scrambling breaches against Ukraine and other countries. However, the charges have been called into question by Russia.

Ukraine has already been targeted by hackers many times in recent weeks, as Russia has massed forces around its borders. Fears of a full-fledged invasion grew this week when Moscow dispatched soldiers to two rebel districts in eastern Ukraine.

Cybersecurity experts are rushing to break the dangerous application. They discovered that the wiping software looked to have been digitally signed with a certificate given to an obscure Cypriot business named Hermetica Digital Ltd.

Earlier on Wednesday, the websites of Ukraine’s government, the foreign ministry, and state security agency were unavailable due to what the government described as the commencement of new denial of service (DDoS) attack.

“At about 4 pm, another mass DDoS attack on our state began. We have relevant data from a number of banks,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation, adding that the parliament website was also hit. He did not specify which banks were hit.

“Phishing attacks on public authorities and critical infrastructure, the spread of malicious software, as well as attempts to penetrate private and public sector networks and further destructive actions have intensified,” Ukraine’s data protection watchdog stated in a statement.

The computer networks of Ukraine’s defense ministry and two banks were flooded in a separate attack last week, although the damage was negligible.

Before the wiper was discovered, Mark Warner, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Russia’s denial of service actions against Ukraine was “well short of what Russia could potentially unleash.”

Ukraine has been exposed to a barrage of cyberattacks blamed on Russia since 2014. However, any association has been explicitly denied by the Kremlin.