Head of Security Service of Ukraine: Purpose of cyber attack was to destabilize the situation inside Ukraine
Ukrainian law enforcement agencies together with international experts continue to look into the circumstances of a powerful cyber attack against Ukrainian private and state institutions on June 27th, Interfax-Ukraine reports.
“Today, our experts, in cooperation with experts from the United States, the United Kingdom and Microsoft, are working together to establish the circumstances of this cyber-attack,” said the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Vasyl Hrytsak on Tuesday at the ceremony of completing the first stage of cooperation with the Ukraine-NATO Trust Fund In the field of cyber defense.
In answer to a question about whether Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have evidence that Russian special services were involved in organizing the attack, Hrytsak said, “Unfortunately, I cannot fully say what I really want to say, as criminal proceedings are being handled by the National Police. But even during informal communication with our partners, we arrive at the same conclusion: significant forces were used to organize such a powerful cyber-attack.”
The head of the Security Service of Ukraine also noted that is has been established that hacker groups were involved in organizing this attack, which at one time attacked Ukrainian energy companies and financial institutions with the help of viruses, including the Blackenergy virus.
“All this was done with an alleged financial purpose (extortion of funds, as reported by news agency Rosbalt), but in fact the goal was the destabilization of the situation inside our country,” the head of the Ukrainian Security Service said.
Hrytsak also added, “We have identified and documented a new way of infecting systems through accounting software.”
The head of SBU again stressed, “We regard this hacking attack as a link in a chain that began before. This was aimed at destabilizing the situation inside the country.”
On Tuesday, June 27th, computer networks of the Ukrainian government and dozens of large state and private banks and companies became the victims of a massive virus attack, which in some cases led to their operations being suspended. Experts initially called it the largest such cyber-attack in Ukraine.