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Cyber warfare continues to play a major role in the Russia-Ukraine war, with Russia believed to be behind a number of attacks on critical infrastructure organisations in Ukraine.
The country’s state-owned and largest oil and gas company, Naftogaz, reported that it had been hit by a cyber attack that brought some of its operations to a standstill.
“Dear clients of Naftogaz of Ukraine and Gazmerezh. A large-scale cyber attack on one of the data centres used by our companies was recorded,” said the company on its Telegram.
“The website and call centre are currently down. We will inform you further about the terms of service restoration. Thank you for understanding!”
The company did not disclose any additional details about the nature of the cyber attack or who it believed to be behind the attack. It has since revealed that its services have returned to normal.
“Dear customers, all online services of the gas supply company ‘Naftogaz of Ukraine’ and Gazmerezh have been restored!
“The websites and call centre of the companies are working as usual. We apologise for the temporary inconvenience, and thank you for your understanding and support!”
Ukraine’s national postal service, Ukrposhta, also reported an attack, which it said resulted in a “major technical failure” in its IT systems.
“There was a major technical failure in our IT systems. Our specialists are actively working to resolve the issue and restore full time, but it may take a while,” it wrote on Facebook.
The company’s chief executive, Igor Smelyansky, took to his Telegram to reveal that the outages were the result of an attack.
“Friends, tonight there was an attack on the information infrastructure of partners,” he wrote.
“Because of this, there are disruptions in our work. Acceptance of payments across the country (96 per cent), work of personal account and API has already been resumed.
“Small delays in the delivery of parcels are possible, but we do everything to minimise them. We will keep you updated on the status of the renewal. Thank you for understanding!”
Smelyansky later revealed that the attack was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) but that it had restored services to normal.
Other victims of the recent cyber attack wave included the country’s transport safety agency, DSBT, and Ukraine’s state railway, Ukrzaliznytsia. Both agencies experienced attacks that stalled or halted operations.
According to a source close to the Ukrainian government, speaking to Reuters, there were a number of other victims, largely finance and banking-based organisations, but the government’s policy was to only reveal those whose systems go down.
The source added that while it is yet to identify who is behind the attacks, it said the hackers were “almost certainly” connected to Russian FSB intelligence.
It also said that despite the seriousness, the attacks were not as bad as previous major attacks, such as the attack on Kyivstar.
At this stage, the actual source of the recent wave of attacks is unknown, with nothing to indicate whether or not all the attacks were the result of the same threat actor.
The DSBT attack, however, was claimed by a Russian threat group known as the National Cyber Army.
The same threat group also claimed an attack on the country’s customs services, showing a number of links that it said, at the time, were down.
“Join our attack on the infrastructure of the Ukrainian customs service,” said the group.
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