Ukraine suffered a new cyberattack on Wednesday, the third in a few weeks, against several banks and websites of the government and Parliament, reported the Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov.
“At approximately 4 pm local time, another massive DDoS (denial of service) attack began in our state,” he wrote on his official Telegram social network account.
According to Fedorov, “several banks have been affected, and there are also problems with access to the websites of the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament), the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
A US government official told that they are monitoring the incidents, similar to other recent cyberattacks attributed to the Russian government.
“We view these developments as consistent with the type of activity that Russia would undertake to destabilize Ukraine,” the White House official said on condition of anonymity.
The Parliament page was restored shortly after, the minister said.
The state portal and mobile application “Diia” “successfully overcame the current attack and continue to function in a stable manner,” it added.
Ukraine already suffered in January and on February 15 massive cyberattacks, in which it saw the footprint of Russia, as did the United States.
The one in the middle of the month was, according to the department headed by Fedorov, the largest cyberattack in the country’s history. It was also a DDoS attack against state websites and the banking sector.
Fedorov indicated that it was an attack prepared in advance and whose cost “ascends to millions of dollars”.
“The objective was to destabilize the situation and unleash panic,” he said.
The head of the cybersecurity department of the Security Council of Ukraine (SBU), Ilya Vityuk, noted that the high cost of such an operation rules out the possibility of a lone hacker or a small group acting.
“These types of attacks are carried out by states through intelligence services and specially created infrastructure. We clearly see the footprint of foreign intelligence services,” Vityuk said.