Security News > 2022 > January > ‘Be Afraid:’ Massive Cyberattack Downs Ukrainian Gov’t Sites

Cyberattackers brought down around 70 Ukrainian government websites on Friday, defacing the site of the foreign ministry with a message to "Be afraid and expect the worst."

NEWS IN KYIV: Several Ukrainian government websites down due to a major a cyberattack.

The message reportedly also referenced "Historical land" and dropped the name of the Ukrainian insurgent army, or UPA. UPA is a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary group that engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Soviet Union, the Polish Underground State, Communist Poland and Nazi Germany during World War II. The foreign ministry's spokesperson, Oleg Nikolenko, told The Guardian that the "Massive cyberattack" has knocked the website of the ministry of foreign affairs offline temporarily.

According to the New York Times, the attack also crippled the sites of the cabinet of ministers, along with the ministries of energy, sports, agriculture, veterans' affairs and ecology, among many other government websites.

With regards to the extent of the attacks, he noted that government sites "Are typically built on common software, which explains the domino effect of website shutdowns that we are seeing."

Fedorov reportedly said that some of the attacked websites were blocked by their administrators in order to contain the damage and investigate the attacks, and that "a large part" of the affected websites have already been restored.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/be-afraid-massive-cyberattack-downs-ukrainian-govt-sites/177659/