Cyberattacks took down Ukrainian official and bank websites, prompting the government to declare a statewide state of emergency amid growing fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin could launch a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. The websites of Privatbank (Ukraine's largest bank) and Oschadbank (the State Savings Bank) were also blasted in the onslaught and brought down Ukrainian government sites as well, according to Internet monitor NetBlocks.
"At around 4 p.m., another massive DDoS attack on the state commenced. We have relevant data from several banks," stated Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation, who also mentioned the parliament website had been hacked. Hackers were prepared to conduct big attacks on government organizations, banks, and the defense sector, as Ukrainian authorities said earlier this week.
SSSCIP and other national cybersecurity authorities in Ukraine are currently "working on countering the assaults, gathering and evaluating information." According to the Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA), the attackers used DDoS-as-a-Service platforms and numerous bot networks, including Mirai and Meris, to carry out the DDoS attacks on February 15th. The DDoS attacks were traced to Russia's Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces on the same day, according to the White House.
"We have technical information indicating ties the Russian main intelligence directorate, or GRU," Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber Anne Neuberger stated. "Known GRU infrastructure was spotted delivering huge volumes of communication to Ukraine-based IP addresses and domains."
Neuberger went on to say as, despite the "limited impact," the strikes can be considered as "setting the framework" for more disruptive attacks, which could coincide with a possible invasion of Ukraine's territory.
The UK government also blamed Russian GRU hackers for the DDoS strikes last week which targeted Ukrainian military and state-owned bank websites. Following a press release from Ukraine's Security Service (SSU), which also had its website hacked, the country was attacked by a "huge wave of hybrid warfare." The SSU announced earlier this month so, during January 2022, it stopped over 120 cyberattacks aimed at Ukrainian governmental entities.
