Reportedly, the DDoS attacks have also impacted ATM services in Ukraine.
A series of DDoS attacks have crippled the government, banking, and military sector platforms in Ukraine, the Defence Ministry has confirmed in a Tweet sent out at 4:48 PM (GMT) Feb 15, 2022, which is around 8:00 PM Kyiv time.
The victims of the cyber attack include the official website of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Cabinet Ministers of Ukraine, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Oschadbank (aka the State Savings Bank of Ukraine), PrivatBank, one of the largest commercial banks in Ukraine, and ATM services in the country.
The MOU website probably suffered a DDoS attack: an excessive number of requests per second was recorded. Technical works on restoration of regular functioning are carried out.
Ukrainian Ministry of Defense on Twitter
The severity of the attack can be quantified by the fact it has been more than 6 hours since the attack took place, yet at the time of writing, websites of the Defence Ministry, PrivatBank, Oschadbank, and several other institutions were offline.
Currently, the Ministry is only using its official Facebook, Twitter, and military radio for communication. On the other hand, Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security said on Facebook that Privat24, an immensely popular banking app in the country was also affected by the attack. However, at the time of writing, Privat24’s website was online.
According to NetBlocks, a watchdog organization that monitors cybersecurity and cyberattacks related events globally, also confirmed the attack. In a tweet, the organization said that:
Although it is unclear who was behind these DDoS attacks, it is worth noting that the incident took place amid ongoing tensions with Russia where President Putin threatened dire consequences if Ukraine joined NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
Nevertheless, Ukraine’s Cyber Police has confirmed that National Police has opened a criminal investigation into DDoS attacks on Ukrainian web resources.
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