Ukraine Defence Ministry & Banks Under Cyber Attack

Ukraine’s Defence ministry and two banks came under a cyber attack on Tuesday 15th February that shut access to the ministry’s website, according to the Ukrainian Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security (CSCIS), which is part of the culture ministry.

THe CSCIS, also konwn as the Stratcom Centre, did not say who it blamed for the attack, but a statement suggested it was accusing Russian state-sponsored hackers. “It is not ruled out that the aggressor used tactics of little dirty tricks because its aggressive plans are not working out on a large scale,” it said in a statement.

The  Ukrainian PrivatBank and Oschadbank have both been affected by the strike, which comes amid increasing fears that a Russian cyber attack may be precursor to a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. 

The CSCI confirmed that the PrivatBank app is down for some users and posted "During the last hours 'PrivatBank' is under a massive DDoS-attack." on its Facebook page. "Privat24 users report problems with payments and in general with the operation of the app. Some users are completely unable to access Privat24, others do not reflect balance and recent transactions... There is no threat to investors' funds. Cyberattack is exclusively related to the Privat24 app. The rest of the financial transactions are carried out in a normal manner."

This is not the first time that Ukrainian internet resources have been under attack since the beginning of the Russian military aggression and the purpose of such attacks is to destabilize the internal situation in the country.

Using what the CSCIC say are false flag tactics, the attackers have used various references to make it appear that these attacks originated in Poland.

It would appear that Russia is attemtiong to undermine trust between Ukraine and Poland, generating  contradictions in the interpretation of fast-moving events in Ukraine,  that could create problems for cooperation between the two countries.

According to sources in Ukraine, Russian intelligence services are using hacking methods to lay false trails, with the intention to escalate confusion over the source of the cyber attacks, to undermine Ukrainian-Polish cooperation and to promote  the international isolation of Ukraine.

Spravdi:       Reuters:      Mirror:     Euronews:    USNews:     iNews:      LinkedIn / CSCIS

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