A series of cyberattacks on Tuesday knocked the websites of Ukrainian government offices and major banks offline, Ukrainian authorities said, attacks that came amid strong tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine.
It was too early to know, however, if the apparently low-level denial-of-service attacks might be a smokescreen for more serious and damaging cyber mischief.
Escalating fears about a Russian invasion of Ukraine eased slightly as Russia sent signals Tuesday that it might be pulling back from the brink, but Western powers demanded proof.
At least 10 Ukrainian websites were unreachable due to denial-of-service attacks, including those of the Defense Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, the Culture Ministry, and Ukraine’s two largest state banks. In such attacks, websites are barraged with a flood of junk data packets, rendering them unreachable.
Customers at Ukraine’s largest state-owned bank, Privatbank, and the state-owned Sberbank reported problems with online payments and the banks’ apps. “There is no threat to depositors’ funds,” the Ukrainian Information Ministry’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security said in a statement.
The deputy minister, Victor Zhora, confirmed the cyberattacks. The ministry suggested Russia could be behind Tuesday’s incident, without providing details. “It is possible that the aggressor resorted to tactics of petty mischief, because his aggressive plans aren’t working overall,” the statement said. Oleh Derevianko, a leading private sector expert and founder of the ISSP cybersecurity firm, said it was not immediately clear if Tuesday’s cyberattacks were limited to a denial-of-service campaign.
