Ukraine is pointing the finger at Russians hacking their military internet, the country's banking system, and state-run lenders, calling the cyberattack the largest of its kind and one a U.S. expert sees as a potential "precursor" to further action.
"Yesterday, on February 15, the largest DDoS attack in the history of Ukraine was carried out on government websites, on the banking sector," Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in a joint briefing with senior officials.
A DDoS attack — "distributed denial-of-service" — is a ploy to disrupt normal internet connections of a network.
"This attack is unprecedented; it was prepared in advance. And the key goal of this attack is destabilization, it is to sow panic, to do everything so that a certain chaos appears in our country."
The director of the McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security at Auburn University told Fox News this kind of attack has been the "precursor" to further attacks.
"Russia has engaged in cyberattacks and electronic warfare in terms of a precursor to physical and kinetic activity," Frank Cilluffo told Fox News, noting cyberattacks in Georgia and Crimea region.
"A DDoS attack can be pretty effective if utilized in support of other means. It's not about the attack itself, but if you are able to disrupt communications of some sort, and then you have ulterior motives, then clearly it can be effective. And Russia did do this to Estonia in the past, massive DDoS attacks on the banking sector and the Estonian government."
The Kremlin has denied involvement in the DDoS attacks, which hit Ukraine at a time when the country is bracing itself for a possible invasion after Russia massed more than 100,000 troops near its borders in recent weeks.
Ukraine has previously also accused Russia of launching cyberattacks to sow panic and crash its financial system.
llya Vityuk, head of the cybersecurity department of the state security service (SBU), said it was too early to identify specific perpetrators.
But he added: "And today we know that the only country that is interested in such ... attacks on our state, especially against the backdrop of massive panic about a possible military invasion, the only country that is interested is the Russian Federation."
Fedorov said the attacks came from many places and involved IP addresses from Russia, China, Uzbekistan, and the Czech Republic.
A senior central bank official said the hackers had succeeded in disrupting services at PrivatBank, the country's largest lender, but the attacks did not cause any losses in the financial system. The hackers also targeted smaller banks in a second wave.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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