Information Systems Security Partners (ISSP), a cyber-security firm, has linked the event to a 2015 breach and outage that affected 225,000 people. It also claimed that several other recent incidents in Ukraine were linked.
The current
assault has yet to be formally traced to a state actor. However, Ukraine has
stated that Russia launched hundreds of cyber operations against it in 2016.
Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, stated in December that hackers had targeted official institutions 6,500 times in the final two months of 2016.
He said that
the occurrences demonstrated that Russia was waging a cyberwar against the
country.
The
Ukrainian government has accused Russia of being behind a cyber-attack on
dozens of government websites on Friday.
In the
greatest such attack on Ukraine in four years, around 70 government websites
were momentarily taken offline.
Before the
web pages were taken down, a message emerged urging Ukrainians to “be prepared
for the worst.” Most of the sites’ access was restored within hours.
The United
States and NATO denounced the attack and promised Ukraine their assistance.
Russia has not responded to the breach.
Ukraine
claims to have “proof” that Russia was behind a large cyber-attack that took
offline vital government websites last week. At the same time, Microsoft warns
that the intrusion might be significantly worse than previously thought.
Kyiv claimed
late Friday that early evidence suggested Russian security agencies were behind
the cyber-attack.