A distributed denial-of-service cyber-attack today took down Ukrainian defense military websites – and at least two of the nation’s biggest banks were knocked offline too.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense website is still unavailable at time of publication. On social media, it reported “technical works on restoration of regular functioning” are underway after it was “probably attacked by DDoS: an excessive number of requests per second was recorded.” Other military sites are also apparently suffering outages.
In what appears to have been a coordinated internet attack, Ukraine’s biggest commercial banking operation PrivatBank and big-three financial institution Oschadbank were also hit around the same time, knocking out some online transactions and ATMs across the country. Oschadbank is now back up and running albeit in a limited way; PrivatBank’s website is still unavailable to use and instead shows a vandalized homepage.
Not a good look for your largest bank … A screenshot of PrivatBank’s defaced website. Click to enlarge
“PrivatBank has suffered a DDoS attack,” said the Ukraine government’s Centre for Strategic Communications on Facebook. “For one hour during the attack, some services (ATM, TSO) were not working. Starting at 1630 these services have been restored.
“Oshchadbank also suffered a DDoS attack. Work is currently underway to restore the system. It is already working in stable mode. There is only a slow entry to the Oshchad24/7 system due to an additional load on the communication channels.”
These DDoS strikes will set off red flags in the mind of security engineers. Denial-of-service attacks are frequently used as a distraction while intrusion attempts are made or tested, and these are high-profile targets.
Given similar incidents last month against Ukrainian government websites attributed to Russia and its satellite-state Belarus, not to mention a five-year record of such shenanigans – and more than 100,000 Russian Armed Force troops near Ukraine’s border – you’d have thought the Ukrainian military would have been better prepared for an online assault. It appears commercial operations are still getting the best talent.
Incidentally, Russian state-media org Tass reports Russia is pulling back some troops from the border after “scheduled drills.” ®