Cyberwar Heating Up: Ukraine hit by massive cyber attack from Russia, mobile networks

[aelius]

The telecommunication system of Ukraine has got hit by cyber-attacks through the equipment which have been installed in the Russian-influenced Crimea. These equipment have interfered with the phones lines of the parliament members causing to block them.

Some of the telecommunication systems and the telephone services of Ukraine have been severed after the Russian forces have taken control over the Crimea region this past Friday. As per the head of the security services of Ukraine, it is the government officials which are now being targeted with the cyber-attacks.

The security services chief has said:

I confirm that an attack is under way on mobile phones of members of Ukrainian parliament for the second day in a row. At the entrance to [telco] Ukrtelecom in Crimea, illegally and in violation of all commercial contracts, was installed equipment that blocks my phone as well as the phones of other deputies, regardless of their political affiliation

The Ukrtelecom has briefed that armed forces have raided their facilities in the region and they have been tampering with their optic fiber works causing the outages of internet system and the local telephone in the continent.

The chief of the security services has not made any clear indication about whether the new issues are associated with the earlier raid, or is it some separate incident of tampering that has taken place.

The domestic intelligence services of Russia have however declined to make any comment about their involvement in the recent cyber-attacks on the telecommunication systems of Ukraine.

The main website of the government of Ukraine also went offline for about 72 hours when the Russian forces took control over the peninsula.

Bumgarner who operates a firm which advises the government agencies and companies about how to counter the cyber-attacks has said that he is not certain about what caused the website to trip. However, he is of the belief that Moscow possesses the ability to come up with such attacks.

He said that,

I know they have the ability to do at least as much damage as they did in Estonia and Georgia.

Estonia has previously suffered under cyber-attacks in 2007. The attacks were caused by Moscow in which there systems were disrupted form 10 days during their conflict with Moscow. A similar attack was faced at Georgia when they had a brief war with Russia in 2008.

Russia however denied their involvement in any of those attacks by saying that they might have been caused by some patriotic hackers, and the government had on influence over them.

It is a fact that most of the part of the Ukraine’s telecommunication structure was made when the country was part of Soviet Union, along with Russia. This indicates towards the vulnerability of their system to Moscow.

Jim Lewis who is a former officer of the US Foreign Service has said that Russia has got all the place wired.

Lewis has also said that,

They are right next door and most traffic has to go through Russia. That they haven’t done more probably reflects their confidence that they’re going to come out ahead and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Experts of Cyber-warfare have said that Russia possesses the ability to launch such attacks, but they do not have any need to do so.

Source: Cyberwar Heating Up: Ukraine hit by massive cyber attack from Russia, mobile networks blocked | HackRead - Latest Cyber Crime - Information Security - Hacking News