Russian military hackers are accused of being behind a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that inaccessible several Ukrainian banks and government websites.
This accusation came from the governments of the United States and Britain, who were united in calling on Russia to curb their aggressive actions in cyberspace, as expressed by US deputy security advices Anne Neuberger.
"Russia likes to move in the dark and expects a lengthy attribution process. That's why we moved quickly to attribute this DDoS attack. We believe the Russian government is responsible for the attacks on banks in Ukraine this week," Neuberger explained.
Neuberger claims the US has data showing that infrastructure belonging to the GRU, one of Russia's military agencies, "sends" large amounts of data to IP addresses and domains based in Ukraine.
The British government, on a different occasion, said the GRU was almost certainly involved in the DDoS attack, where the target would be 'flooded' by large amounts of data that would be inaccessible.
"This attack demonstrates a disregard for Ukraine's sovereignty. "This activity is another example of Russia's aggressive actions against Ukraine, and this kind of behavior is unacceptable," the UK's Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office said in a statement.
According to Neuberger, although DDoS does not have too much impact, this attack could be just a prelude to a more severe cyberattack, complementing the possibility of an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which is indicated by the increasing number of Russian troops on standby on its border with Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government has previously accused Russia of being behind the DDoS attack. The Russian government certainly claims that they were not involved in the attack.