A recent cyber-attack on the Ukrainian Government took down over 70 government websites, after hackers took control of their web servers. The hackers posted messages on government websites, disrupting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other departments. The sites were temporarily down, with access to most of them restored within several hours.
According to reports, the hackers left a message on the foreign ministry website. The message read: “Ukrainians! … All information about you has become public. Be afraid and expect worse. It’s your past, present and future.”
“The malware, which is designed to look like ransomware but lacking a ransom recovery mechanism, is intended to be destructive and designed to render targeted devices inoperable rather than to obtain a ransom,” Microsoft advised.
The Ukrainian Government concluded that Russian media had reported the attack before Ukrainian outlets, so believe they have evidence that the Russians were behind the attack. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) condemned the attack, and have offered support to Ukraine. Russia has not commented on the hack.
Agreement with NATO
NATO is an alliance which includes the United States, most European Union members, the United Kingdom, Canada and Turkey. NATO’s mission is to protect the freedom of its members, and to ensure stability in their regions. NATO said it would soon be signing an agreement with Ukraine on enhanced cyber-cooperation, which would give it access to the alliance’s malware information sharing platform.
Was Russia behind it all?
Ukraine has advised it has evidence that Russia really was behind this massive cyber-attack. Microsoft expects the hack could be far worse than they had initially thought, and some analysts believe that the cyber-attack could be the beginning of a what could potentially be a large-scale military attack.
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Author: Mahdi Kobeissi, Cybersecurity Consultant