Security News > 2022 > February > Massive cyberattack takes Ukraine military, big bank websites offline

The websites of the Ukrainian military and at least two of the nation's biggest banks were knocked offline in a cyberattack today.

On social media, it reported "Technical works on restoration of regular functioning" are underway after it was "Probably attacked by DDoS: an excessive number of requests per second was recorded." Other military sites are also apparently suffering outages.

In what appears to have been a coordinated internet attack, Ukraine's biggest commercial banking operation PrivatBank and big-three financial institution Oschadbank were also hit around the same time, knocking out some online transactions and ATMs across the country.

"PrivatBank has suffered a DDoS attack," the Ukraine government's Centre for Strategic Communications said on Facebook though a defaced page suggests there's something more serious afoot than a distributed denial-of-service.

"For one hour during the attack, some services were not working," the center added.

Given similar incidents last month against Ukrainian government websites attributed to Russia and its satellite-state Belarus, not to mention a five-year record of such shenanigans - and more than 100,000 Russian Armed Force troops near Ukraine's border - you'd have thought the Ukrainian military would have been better prepared for an online assault.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/02/15/ukraine_cyberattack/