Major institutional websites of Ukraine were massively struck by cyberattacks because of destructive malware. Websites of the banking sector, parliament, and many other government websites crashed down as another wave of massive malware hit the country’s services on Wednesday.
The cybersecurity researchers stated that unidentified attackers massively infected thousands of computers with malware causing the websites to crash. The cyberattacks were so humongous that neighboring countries Lithuania and Latvia’s computers were also infected.
As the fear of possible Russian invasion rises to its peak in Ukraine, the Council of Ministers and foreign ministry websites took forever to load and later on were unreachable. The cyberattacks did not stop but they progressed towards other websites.
Cyberattacks with the help of destructive malware are known to be a key element to accompany any kind of military incursion by Russia.
ESET Research labs stated that it had detected a different kind of data-wiping malware on Wednesday which appeared religiously on “hundreds of machines in the country.”
“With regards whether the malware was successful in its wiping capability, we assume that this indeed was the case and affected machines were wiped,” said ESET research chief Jean-Ian Boutin. He did not name the targets but stated that they were “large organizations.” ESET did not disclosed who was responsible for these attacks.
Ukraine’s Symantec threat intelligence found out that three big organizations of the country were massively hit by this suspicious wiper malware.
“The attackers have gone after these targets without much caring for where they may be physically located,” the firm said.
All three targets had “close affiliation with the government of Ukraine,” said Thakur, saying Symantec believed the attacks were “highly targeted.”
After a great deal of research, it is being concluded that this special malware was created somewhere in December 2021.
“Russia likely has been planning this for months, so it is hard to say how many organizations or agencies have been backdoored in preparation for these attacks,” said Chester Wisniewski, a principal research scientist at the cybersecurity firm Sophos. He further said that “the Kremlin intended with the malware to “send the message that they have compromised a significant amount of Ukrainian infrastructure and these are just little morsels to show how ubiquitous their penetration is.”
The cyber analysts have claimed that this wiper malware in Ukraine was activated manually unlike the previous worm that attacked Ukraine called NotPetya which went out of control and spread across the borders.
