Ukrainian Ministry of Defence hit by DDoS attack
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence has been hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, knocking its website offline.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Ministry of Defence stated on Twitter that its official website had recorded “an excessive number of requests per second”, leading it to believe that it was “probably” targeted by a DDoS attack.
The site couldn’t be accessed for most of the afternoon, displaying a message stating that it was undergoing maintenance. On Wednesday, the issue seemed to have been resolved.
News of the attack was confirmed by Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications & Information Security, which was founded by the Ministry of Culture & Information Policy of Ukraine with the purpose of tackling misinformation.
Ukraine’s largest commercial bank, PrivatBank, as well as the State Savings Bank of Ukraine, Oschadbank, were also reportedly hit by cyber attacks, with customers unable to log into their accounts. The issue was resolved at around 7pm local time, according to the Centre.
The Centre stated that it wasn’t ruling out “that the aggressor used tactics of little dirty tricks because its aggressive plans are not working out on a large scale”.
Although the perpetrators weren’t officially named, the attacks come amid strained relations with Russia, which in January sent an estimated 150,000 troops to its border with Ukraine. It also comes after Ukraine’s foreign and education ministries, as well as its embassies in the UK, US, and Sweden, fell victim to a “massive” cyber attack in January.
The country had suffered a number of destabilising cyber attacks in the last eight years, with power supplies, shops, and IT systems for the country’s banks all being targeted. Although responsibility for the attacks has been attributed to Russia’s “hybrid war” strategy, Putin’s government has denied any involvement.
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