Crisis: Ukraine’s Government Websites, Banks Under Cyber Attack

There was a mass cyber attack on Ukraine’s websites, including banks on Wednesday.

According to a report by CNBC, a lot of Ukrainian websites were offline on Wednesday as a result of a mass Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack which enables hackers to flood a victim’s network, thereby making it impossible for other people to access it.

Head of Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov told CNBC that the attack affected some banks, websites for the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cabinet of Ministers, as well as Rada, the country’s parliament.

“We’ve observed that the current network disruption has partial impact on the network layer to multiple defense and ministerial websites in Ukraine.

“The spread of outages is similar but distinct from the recent DDOS attack targeting defense and banking platforms, with the latter not impacted in this instance”, NetBlocks director, Alp Toker told Reuters.

United States’ president Joe Biden had earlier warned that Russia has begun an invasion, following the presence of troops into two pro-Russian breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.

There had also been earlier reports that many Ukrainian residents received text messages that ATMs in the country did not work.

Investors King gathered that Ukraine’s parliament voted on Wednesday to declare a state of emergency as a result of the crisis.

The country announced a nationwide emergency and called on all its citizens in Russia and all its surrounding countries to leave, while military reservists are expected to report for active duty.

Investors King had earlier reported that oil traders are concerned that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine could disrupt global oil supply amid growing demand for the commodity.

“If Russia invades Ukraine, crude oil and natural gas prices can be expected to surge significantly. In this case, Brent would probably exceed $100 per barrel,” a Commerzbank analyst, Carsten Fritsch said.