- Joined
- Apr 18, 2013
- Messages
- 101,305
- Reaction score
- 91,323
- Location
- Barsoom
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
U.S., U.K. Say Russian Government Responsible For Cyberattack On Ukraine
The United States and Great Britain have accused Russia of being behind the February 15 cyberattacks on Ukraine's Defense Ministry and banking system.
www.rferl.org
2.18.22
The United States and Great Britain have accused Russia of being behind the February 15 cyberattacks on Ukraine's Defense Ministry and banking system. Anne Neuberger, the White House's chief cyber official, told reporters on February 18 that "we believe the Russian government is responsible for widespread cyberattacks on Ukrainian banks this week." Neuberger said U.S. officials decided to quickly go public with the information on the cyberattack because of the urgency of the situation, given Russia's massive buildup of troops along the Ukrainian border. Neuberger said U.S. experts had obtained data showing that infrastructure connected with Russia's GRU military intelligence agency "was seen transmitting high volumes of communication to Ukraine-based IP addresses and domains." Neuberger said U.S. experts had obtained data showing that infrastructure connected with Russia's GRU military intelligence agency "was seen transmitting high volumes of communication to Ukraine-based IP addresses and domains."
The Ukrainian government on February 15 said the websites of its armed forces and several ministries and banks were crippled by a cyberattack. The website of the Defense Ministry "probably suffered DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks when an excessive number of requests per second was recorded," the ministry said on Twitter. The ministry was one of at least 10 Ukrainian websites that stopped working due to DDoS attacks, AP reported. It said the Foreign Ministry and the Culture Ministry were among the others affected.
At least two banks, Privatbank and Oschadbank, were also targeted by cyberattacks on February 15. Privatbank's outages were caused by a DDoS attack, the center said. Neuberger said earlier this month that Russia could use cyberattacks as part of its efforts to destabilize and further invade Ukraine. Two U.S. technology companies -- Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks -- on February 4 said a hacking team that Ukraine says is controlled by Russian intelligence has targeted a wide range of organizations in the country.
No surprise here. There will no doubt be a huge cyber-attack campaign whenever Putin gives the order to invade.
Targets will include the UA military, power grids, financial institutions, media websites etc.