On Sunday, Ukraine accused Russia of conducting a massive cyber-attack that defaced several official Ukrainian government websites. A day earlier, American tech giant Microsoft disclosed that its Threat Intelligence Centre had detected a “destructive malware operation” targeting several organisations in Ukraine.
According to Microsoft, the reach of the malware “span multiple government, non-profit and information technology organisations,” adding, “The malware is disguised as ransomware but, if activated by the attacker, would render the infected computer system inoperable.”
Hacked government websites displayed messages in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish, threatening people that all their personal data would be uploaded to a public network and added that the data of the infected machines would also be destroyed with no means of restoring it. The message read, “Be afraid and expect the worst. This is for your past, present and future.”
On Sunday, Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Development said in a statement that “all evidence indicates that Russia is behind the cyberattack,” adding, “Moscow continues to wage a hybrid war and is actively building up its forces in the information and cyberspaces,” in a possible reference to Russia’s aggressive military activity along the Ukrainian border. The ministry statement proclaimed that the purpose of these attacks is to “intimidate society” and “destabilise the situation in Ukraine,” eroding public trust from authorities.
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also blamed the Russians for the attack saying, “This is part of the Russian playbook,” adding that Washington and its private partners are working to determine the source of the attacks.
In an interview with CNN, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed Ukraine’s claims and said in English, “Russia has nothing to do with these cyberattacks. Ukrainians are blaming everything on Russia, even their bad weather in their country.”
The cyberattacks on Ukraine come after last week’s diplomatic talks between the West and Russia over the conflict in Ukraine ended without any progress. The recent cyber-attacks add to the existing tensions between Kyiv and Moscow. The US had been warning about a possible attack from Russia, since Moscow has continued to amass troops along the Ukrainian border in preparation for a possible invasion and attack on Kyiv from two fronts—physical and cyber.
Since 2017, cyber security professionals in Ukraine have been securing the country’s critical infrastructure with $40 million in assistance from the US, particularly after Russia targeted Ukraine with a virus called NotPetya in the same year. Russian-backed hackers also disrupted Ukraine’s 2014 national elections and shut down Ukraine’s power grid briefly during the winters of 2015 and 2016.