Ukraine Defense Ministry Confirms Cyberattack
On Tuesday, the Ukraine Ministry of Defense tweeted that its websites were offline, and the Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security of Ukraine (the Stratcom Centre) confirmed the cyberattack. The Foreign Ministry and Cultural Ministry websites were also reported down.
At the time of writing, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces websites were still currently down from the attack. The customers of the two state-owned banks involved — PrivatBank and Oschadbank — reportedly could not access the banks’ apps or their bank cards while the systems were affected. While Oshadbank has confirmed the cyber-attack, stating it caused some of their systems to slow down, Privatbank has not commented at this time.
Russia at Ukraine’s Border
The cyberattack comes the same day that Russia announced that it was withdrawing some of the troops currently at the border. The withdrawal comes only after Russia completed some military exercises, including test missile launches. The announcement did not do much for tensions as fears of an invasion run high. Russia did not disclose how many troops were being pulled back or where they were being sent. For the past several months, Russia has been sending troops to the Crimean peninsula and Belarus, which is at the eastern, southern, and northern borders of Ukraine. The military build-up is considered the largest in Europe since the Cold War. Many have speculated that this is Russia’s way of setting itself up for a successful invasion and occurs while Russia pressures NATO to veto Ukraine’s move to become a member of the military alliance. Additionally, Russia is also demanding that NATO and the USA stop sending weapons to Ukraine, as well as remove troops from Eastern Europe — requests the West has rejected.
Is Russia Behind the Attack?
A recent study states that cybercriminals out of Russia are tied to a large amount of all global ransomware and cryptocurrency-based money laundering. Because of this, it’s not a stretch to think a Russian bad actor could be at the root of today’s attack. The Stratcom Centre has not officially stated who they believe committed the attack but did not count out Russia’s involvement. “It is not ruled out that the aggressor used tactics of little dirty tricks because its aggressive plans are not working out on a large scale,” the group said. Some analysts have suggested a DDoS attack — which floods websites with data, requests and bot visitors, knocking them offline — could be a ruse for more serious operations.
