Ukrainian Government Websites Hit By Suspected Cyber-Attack

Multiple Ukrainian government websites have been targeted in a potential cyber-attack, according to reports.

Today, February 23, a number Ukrainian government and foreign ministry pages went down.

Institutions such as the health, veterans and foreign ministries were reportedly affected. While it is current unconfirmed as to who is responsible for the alleged attack, earlier this week Ukraine is said to have received warnings of hackers preparing attacks on government agencies.

Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation said several banks were impacted by the outage, reportedly hit with a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack, The Guardian reports.

Ukraine suffered a string of cyber attacks recently, that Kyiv has blamed on Russia. However, Moscow has denied any involvement in the most recent attacks.

The news comes after the EU deployed a cyber rapid-response team (CRRT) across Europe following a call for help from Ukraine, BBC News reports.

The team is said to contain experts from Lithuania, Croatia, Poland, Estonia, Romania, and the Netherlands and is reportedly on hand to help defend Ukraine from cyber-attacks.

The Lithuanian Ministry of Defence released a tweet about the team, saying, 'In response to Ukraine request, [we] are activating [a] Lithuanian-led cyber rapid-response team, which will help Ukrainian institutions to cope with growing cyber-threats. #StandWithUkraine'.

The CRRT is an effort to increase the defence and co-operation between EU members. They are equipped to detect, recognise and help mitigate cyber-threats if required.

According to an official, the team is currently 'composed of different cyber-expertise, such as incident response, forensics, vulnerability assessment, to be able to react to a variety of scenarios'.

In addition to potential cyber attacks in Ukraine, warnings have been given regarding a potential serge in cyber attacks in the UK.

Officials are expecting retaliation from a Kremlin-linked cyber group, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed sanctions on Russia and offered extra military support to Ukraine, The Independent reports.

British organisations have been told to 'bolster their online defences' by the National Cyber Security Centre, following the developing situation between Russia and Ukraine.

Digital Shadows analyst Stefano De Blasi said that it is 'realistically possible that Russia will eventually retaliate against the sanctions recently imposed on them with targeted cyber operations', and that DDOS attacks could be launched against organisations in the West.

DDOS attacks are attempts to interrupt the running of a server or network by flooding it with internet traffic.

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