Agency Report

The British government on Friday accused Russian intelligence of involvement in a cyberattack this week that targeted Ukrainian state and bank websites, for which Moscow has denied responsibility.

Kyiv had earlier suggested the attack came from Russia as fears persist that Moscow is planning to invade its Western-backed neighbour Ukraine.

“The government today attributed the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the Ukrainian banking sector on 15 and 16 February 2022 to have involved the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate,” Britain’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

“The decision to publicly attribute this incident underlines the fact that the UK and its allies will not tolerate malicious cyber activity.”

The affected sites included the Oschadbank state savings bank and Privat — two of the country’s largest financial institutions, as well as the defence ministry.

Both bank sites resumed service later on Tuesday, but the military sites remained inaccessible hours after the initial reports of the attack emerged.

Ukraine’s communications watchdog pointed the finger at Moscow.

“It cannot be excluded that the aggressor is resorting to dirty tricks,” Ukraine’s cyber watchdog said in reference to Russia.

Tuesday’s cyberattack came one month after another strike briefly took down key government websites.

AFP