Europe was on Friday rushing to support Kyiv’s cybersecurity services as they fight an attack against Ukrainian government websites.
Although no group has been immediately identified as responsible, the attacks on official sites come as some 100,000 Russian troops are massed on the Ukrainian border, sparking fears of a potential invasion. Taking down communications would be an expected precursor to a military assault.
The European Union’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell was quick to hint at the Kremlin’s involvement. Although he noted the attacker was still unknown, he said “one can figure” who is behind the strike against the websites.
He added the bloc would “mobilize all our resources to help Ukraine to face these cyberattacks.”
The websites of the ministry of foreign affairs, the ministry of agriculture and ministry of education went down due to the “massive hacking attack,” a spokesman for the foreign ministry tweeted Friday — a day after diplomatic talks between Russia and the West ended in stalemate.
Unidentified hackers defaced and crippled multiple Ukrainian government websites on Friday. “Ukrainians, be afraid and prepare for the worst. All your personal data has been uploaded to the web,” a message said in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish, before the page was taken down. The foreign affairs, agriculture and education websites were still down at the time of writing, as were websites of Ukrainian embassies and missions across the world.
The EU on Friday called for a meeting of the Political and Security Committee (PSC), a body that deals with security and defense to gather for an emergency meeting to discuss “how we can provide technical assistance to Ukraine to it increase its resilience against these kinds of attacks,” Borrell told reporters in Brest, France, on the sidelines of an informal meeting of foreign affairs ministers.
According to some diplomats, no decision is expected at the PSC meeting in the afternoon because Ukraine still has to investigate who is behind the attack and also to indicate what kind of help it needs. Still, a declaration has been proposed and one option is to send experts. Diplomats point out that last month the EU agreed to give €31 million to Ukraine (coming from the European Peace Facility, an off-budget instrument that allows the bloc to do more on defense and security) and is aimed to offer support on cyber.