More than a dozen Ukraine Government and embassy websites targeted in massive cyber attack

More than a dozen Ukrainian government websites went down on Friday, January 14, in a massive cyber-attack that also targeted embassies.

The Ukrainian government said the Foreign and Education ministries were among those attacked, along with Ukraine’s embassies in the UK, US and Sweden.

Before the sites went down a message appeared warning Ukrainians to “prepare for the worst”.

It was unclear who was behind the attack but a Ukraine government spokesman said previous cyber-attacks had come from Russia.

This comes as Russia continues to amass hundreds of thousands of troops at its border with Ukraine sparking invasion fears.

The US and NATO believe that Russia will most likely carry out cyber attacks before it invades Ukraine.

Russia has not yet commented or reacted to the news of the cyber attacks. 

Ukraine’s SBU security service reacting to the cyber attacks said in the last nine months last year it “neutralised” 1,200 cyber-attacks or incidents.

The SBU said that no personal data had been leaked in Fridays attck, according to initial assessments, and no content had been changed.

At the start of Friday’s attack, a message on the hacked websites was posted in three languages, Ukrainian, Russian and Polish.

“Ukrainian! All your personal data has been uploaded onto the public internet,” the message read.

 It continued: “This is for your past, your present and your future.”

Among the sites targeted was the Diia website, a key system containing government services that stores personal vaccination data and certificates.

A number of sites were suspended to prevent the attack from spreading, the Ukrainian government said, while the SBU security service said many had already been restored.

This week the US and Russia met in Geneva to discuss tensions along Russia’s border with Ukraine . Russia asked the US to promise never to admit Ukraine to NATO and not to expand NATO eastwards but the Uae rejected it outrightly saying NATO can admit whoever it wants to admit into it’s security alliance.