The Special Communication and Information Protection Service, a government agency, has blocked over 1.7 million hacker attacks on government institutions since the beginning of 2021, the service reported on July 27.
Hackers committed over 400 DDoS attacks on top government agencies — a quarter of those attacks were committed by using Russian IP addresses. 107 attacks targeted Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU).
DDoS or “distributed denial-of-service” is a cyberattack in which perpetrators overwhelm a target website with fake traffic, making it unavailable to intended users.
“Much of the cyberattacks on Ukraine are highly complex and require careful preparation and resources,” the Information Protection Service said in its report. “Usually, a set of these factors connects hackers to government agencies (of Russia).”
In total, the Information Protection Service has detected over 50 million “suspicious activities” involving state websites since the beginning of the year.
According to the agency, malware distribution and phishing attacks (attacks that mean to steal users’ data) are among the most common cyber attacks.
Moreover, since February, hackers have started using new cyber techniques to attack the websites of Ukraine’s security and defense agencies. The perpetrators infected servers with viruses, effectively blocking them. The hacked servers of state agencies were turned into routers allowing hackers to use them to commit further DDoS attacks.
Ukraine has been a constant target for Russian hackers.
In 2017, hackers deployed ransomware called NotPetya. The malware spread across the computers of numerous Ukrainian companies and government bodies, including the Cabinet of Ministers, the Infrastructure Ministry, and even the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
Although the attack seemed to have been initially aimed at destabilizing Ukraine, the malware further spread to other countries, erasing data from computers of famous international brands. Pharma company Merck, for example, lost $870 million as a result of the attack. FedEx’s European subsidiary TNT Express lost $400 million.
The FBI, which took part in the investigation, estimates that the NotPetya attack was “one of the most destructive cyberattacks ever.”
In October 2020, the U.S. has indicted a six-member team of Russian hackers for creating and using destructive malware.
