Ukraine Reports Its Government Website Is Affected By Continuous DDoS Attacks, Russia Ditto

JAKARTA - Ukrainian websites have been under constant and relentless attack from hackers who are thought to be from Russia. According to the cyber surveillance agency from Kiev, Saturday, March 5, these attacks have appeared continuously since the Kremlin launched its invasion of the country on February 24.

In a post on Twitter, the Ukrainian State Special Communications and Information Protection Service said that "Russian hackers continue to attack Ukraine's information resources relentlessly".

The agency also said that sites belonging to the Ukrainian presidency, parliament, cabinet, defense ministry, and interior ministry were among the sites affected by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) which works by redirecting firehose traffic to targeted servers to take them offline.

The agency said the sites had so far been resistant to attacks they described as hurricanes. "We will survive! On the battlefield and in cyberspace!" the agency said, quoted by Reuters.

Meanwhile, Russia's Foreign Ministry could not be reached for comment by Reuters on these Ukrainian allegations. But previously, Russia has denied being behind cyberattacks, including those affecting US elections.

In contrast, Russian sites have also been hit with DDoS attacks. Ukraine has enlisted its underground hackers to help protect critical infrastructure and carry out cyber-espionage missions against Russian troops.

On Friday, March 4, Russia's National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents said there had been a "massive computer attack" on Russian information sources. But they did not explain what the impact of the attack on the attacked site.

Attacking each other through DDoS and malware to spy on opposing forces is a new chapter in the current cyberwar. This also shows how important a country's cyber troops are to deal with attacks from the opposing party.