The aggression, not claimed in the immediate future, occurs in a context of strong tensions between Kiev and Moscow.
Le Monde with AFP
Many Ukrainian government sites were the target, Friday, January 14, of a large cyber attack, according to Kiev. The aggression, not immediately claimed, occurs in a context of strong tensions between Ukraine and Russia, Kiev and its Western allies accuse of planning a new invasion of Ukrainian territory.
“The official website of the Ministry of Education and Science is provisionally closed because of the overall attack that took place on the night of January 13 to 14,” said the Facebook page. The sites of other departments, including emergency situations and foreign affairs, were also inaccessible, found the France-Press Agency Friday morning.
Before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website is made inaccessible, a threatening message had been published by the authors of the cyberattack on his homepage in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish. “Ukrainians, take afraid and prepare yourself at worst. All your personal data has been uploaded to the web”, we could read. This message was accompanied by several logos, including a Ukrainian flag barred.
Ukraine has been several times the target of cyber attacks in recent years, notably one in 2017 which had targeted several critical infrastructures, and another in 2015 against its electricity network. Ukraine and its Western allies have shown Moscow repeatedly to conduct computer attacks against their sites and infrastructures, which Russia is defending.
American justice revealed in October to charge six Russian military intelligence agents for these cyberattacks. They would also be at the origin of other attacks around the world, like those who targeted the party of Emmanuel Macron before the French elections of 2017 and the 2018 Olympic Games in South Korea.