Ukrainian Government Sites Hit by New Wave of Cyber Attacks, Including Ukrainian Intelligence Service

July 15, 2015

More government-linked Twitter accounts hacked and attacked

More Twitter accounts linked to the Ukrainian government came under attack on July 14, less than a day after the country’s National Security and Defense Council’s account started tweeting that it had been taken over by an ultranationalist group.

The personal Twitter account of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov appeared to have been hacked shortly after noon on July 14, with “Avakov” tweeting that his account was now under the control of the Right Sector group.

“Arsen: Do you remember Sashko Biliy?” read one tweet, referring to a far-right Ukrainian nationalist shot dead by police near the town of Rivne last year.

Another tweet claimed Avakov was providing political cover for smuggling in Kharkiv oblast.

A similar message had appeared on the Twitter account of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council the previous day, with the account going on to tweet spurious messages, among them ones calling for Avakov’s resignation, and for police officers in Mukavcheve to be arrested.

Right Sector was involved in a shootout with police over the weekend in Mukavcheve, a western Ukrainian town, in an incident some have linked to a dispute over the lucrative cigarette smuggling business.

However, National Security and Defense Council spokeswoman Anna Vakhotskaya told the Kyiv Post on July 13 that the council did not believe Right Sector was behind the hacking, and instead pinned blame on the Russian intelligence services.

“We can track down who did this,” Vakhotskaya said. “We’re quite certain right now that this is the Russian security services trying to cause panic about Right Sector.”

Meanwhile, the account of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service (@FIS_ua) tweeted that it had come under attack in the early hours of July 14, with numerous suspicious sign-in attempts being logged by Twitter. The service tweeted that its specialists were looking into the incident.

Interior Ministry spokesman Artyom Shevchenko was not available for comment on the matter.

Also on July 14, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported that the Twitter account of the Presidential Administration in Ukraine had been hacked.

Presidential Administration spokesman Andriy Zhigulin told the Kyiv Post the incident was part of a coordinated attack.

“It’s not just us. Avakov’s account was also hacked, as well as that of the Foreign Intelligence Service. We are conducting an investigation into the incident but can’t say right now who was behind it,” Zhigulin said.

National Security and Defense Council spokeswoman Vakhotskaya, while claiming Russia was behind the hacking of the council’s Twitter account, said the hacker, or hackers, had been using an IP address within Ukraine. She said an investigation into the hack attack was going on.

Ukraine has a bad reputation as being a haven for hackers, with experts saying gap-ridden and ill-thought-out legislation makes it easier for Internet miscreants to carry out attacks, and get away with it.

Although it is not known that Russia is behind the attacks on the Ukrainian government-linked Twitter accounts, suspicions have fallen on Moscow before of being behind cyber-attacks on its neighbors.

The government of Estonia, which prides itself on conducting much of its business via the Internet, was virtually paralyzed in 2007, along with banks, newspapers, and broadcasters, in what was believed to be a major state-sponsored cyber-attack.

Estonian government ministers accused the Kremlin of being behind the attacks, but later admitted they had no direct evidence Moscow was to blame.

A 20-year-old ethnic-Russian Estonian man was tried and convicted in 2008 for taking part in the cyber-attack. Dmitri Galushkevich was fined 17,500 kroons (about $1,500) for blocking the website of the Reform Party of then-Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip.