Ukraine's national postal service claims it was hit by a cyber attack Friday, shortly after sales of a popular postage stamp — depicting a Ukrainian soldier making a crude gesture to a Russian warship — went online.
The legacy stamp celebrating the Ukrainian soldier had reportedly been in great demand at Ukraine's postal headquarters in Kyiv, following the much-disputed sinking of a signature ship from Russia's Black Sea fleet.
What made last week's incident controversial?
Kyiv reportedly said its own fleet struck the Russian cruiser Moskva with missiles.
Russia claims the ship sank while being towed in stormy seas, after a fire "caused by an explosion of ammunition."
Citing a Reuters report, Ihor Smilianskyi, Ukrposhta's director general, issued a post-attack apology to customers for what had been categorized as a "distributed denial-of-service" hit, or DDoS.
There was no public mention of which group or country might have spearheaded the cyber attack.
"We are really doing everything, together with internet providers, to restore both the online store and other Ukrposhta systems that are also temporarily not working due to a DDoS attack on our systems," Smilianskyi wrote on Facebook.
Ukrainian officials have been anxious about a cyber attack ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Earlier in April, Ukraine reportedly thwarted an attempt by Russian hackers to damage its electricity grid.
And on Wednesday, three federal U.S. agencies — the FBI, NSA, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — and other worldwide partners issued a joint advisory, warning that Russia's cyber threats against infrastructure targets could extend beyond the borders of Ukraine.
In its statement, the CISA cited the advisory as "the most comprehensive view of the cyber threat posed by Russia to critical infrastructure released by government cyber experts since the invasion of Ukraine."
The advisory also provided alerts of perpetrators from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), and the Russian Ministry of Defense's Central Scientific Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics potentially executing "malicious cyber operations" in the coming days and weeks.
CISA Director Jen Easterly said the advisory "reinforces the demonstrated threat and capability of Russian state-sponsored and Russian aligned cyber-criminal groups to our Homeland."
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