US links Russian intelligence services to DDoS attacks on Ukrainian websites

The US National Security Council (NSC) stated that the recent DDoS attacks on the Ukrainian government and bank websites were carried out by the Russian intelligence services, namely the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU).

• The United States staunchly supports Ukraine in defending its citizens from disruptive or destabilizing Russian cyber-attacks, the agency said in the statement.
• On February 15, 2022, the websites of several major Ukrainian banks were subjected to DDoS attacks: for example, the website and services of PrivatBank were down for several hours. the websites of the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, and several others also fell offline.
• According to Hostmaster, the attack on the government websites began at 8:21 pm on February 15 and lasted more than five hours. It was pretty powerful — up to 150 Gbit/s at peak moments.
• According to cybersecurity experts, the attacks were intended to sow panic among Ukrainian citizens or distract attention from other cyber incidents occurring during the same period.