Ukraine security services say 'too early' to identify cyber attack culprits

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It is “too early” to identify the culprits behind a small wave of unsophisticated cyber attacks that targeted Ukraine on Tuesday, according to a state security official.

Ilya Vityuk, who heads Ukraine‘s security service cyber department, told journalists that their only suspect was Russia, although this wasn’t a formal attribution.

He said officials detected “a trace of foreign intelligence services” in connection with the attacks, which are ongoing although no longer impacting online services.

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Ministry of defence websites and two of the country’s banks were unable to provide online services – alongside reports of ATM services being down – as a result of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

DDoS attacks are among the least sophisticated type of online attack. They overload network resources with connection requests so that the service can’t respond to them all and effectively goes down.

They are often conducted by lone hackers, although such attackers lack the resources to continue the attack for a long period. Ukraine says Tuesday’s attack is ongoing, but that the state authorities have been able to overcome them.

DDoS attacks are incapable of accessing any data on the network itself and so cannot steal data, although they have been used as distraction techniques while more serious data thefts occur.

During the public briefing, one official acknowledged this potential, but said the authorities had not received any reports of data theft or destruction.