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Ukraine’s defence ministry and two of its financial institutions have been hit by cyber attacks amid fears of an imminent military confrontation with Russia.
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The Ukrainian Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security has accused Russia of undermining the online networks of its defence ministry and two banks — Oshadbank and Privatbank.
The systems were compromised on Tuesday (15 February) by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which directed a large volume of traffic to overwhelm targeted servers.
Ukraine authorities have accused Russia of perpetrating the attacks in an attempt to undermine confidence amid the ongoing threat of military invasion.
"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," the Ukrainian Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security noted in a statement.
Russia has mobilised well over 100,000 troops along its border with Ukraine, sparking fears of an all-out war that threatens to embroil NATO.
According to Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at cyber security company CrowdStrike, Ukraine’s western allies should be on guard against similar cyber attacks.
"While there is no evidence of any targeting of western entities at this time, there is certainly potential for collateral impact as a result of disruptive or destructive attacks targeting Ukraine,” Meyers said.
“[This] could impact companies that have a presence in Ukraine, those that do business with Ukrainian companies, or have a supply chain component in Ukraine such as code development/offshoring.”
CrowdStrike has urged organisations to review their security posture.
“The two most effective things that organisations can integrate are a managed threat hunting program to help stop threats before they turn into breaches and establishing an identity-centric zero trust architecture,” Meyers added.
[Related: Malicious cyber actor targeting defence, aviation]
