Cyberattacks accompany Russian military assault on Ukraine

A laptop screen displays a warning message in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish, that appeared on the official website of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry after a massive cyberattack, in this illustration taken Jan 14, 2022. The combination of DDoS attacks, which bombard websites with junk traffic to render them unreachable, and malware infections hewed to Russia’s playbook of combining cyber operations with real-world aggression. — Reuters

BOSTON: The websites of Ukraine’s defense, foreign and interior ministries were unreachable or painfully slow to load Feb 24 morning after a punishing wave of distributed-denial-of-service attacks as Russia struck at its neighbour, explosions shaking the capital of Kyiv and other major cities.

In addition to DDoS attacks on Wednesday, cybersecurity researchers said unidentified attackers had infected hundreds of computers with destructive malware, some in neighbouring Latvia and Lithuania.