Cyber firms warn on suspected Russian plan to attack Ukraine

Power lines are seen near the Trypillian thermal power plant in Kiev region, Ukraine November 23, 2017. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

(Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc on Wednesday warned that hackers have infected at least 500,000 routers and storage devices in dozens of countries with highly sophisticated malicious software, possibly in preparation for another massive cyber attack on Ukraine.

Cisco's Talos cyber intelligence unit said it has high confidence that the Russian government is behind the campaign, dubbed VPNFilter, because the hacking software shares code with malware used in previous cyber attacks that the U.S. government has attributed to Moscow.