On Sunday, January 16, 2022, a company named Microsoft warned the government agencies based in Ukraine of having their computer systems exposed to the virus. It further stated that several computers of the Ukrainian government agencies and non-profit organisations get attacked by Malware named ransomware.
While highlighting the issue, the Microsoft company wrote on its security blog on Saturday, January 13, 2022,” Microsoft Threat Intelligence Centre (MTIC) has discovered that the destructive Malware has targeted various systems of computers present in the government organisations of Ukraine. It also mentioned that the Malware has first appeared on the victim system in Ukraine on January 13, 2022″.
As per the IT company, Malware first affected multiple governments, non-profit organisations, and information technology; all were based in Ukraine.
The MTIC asserted that the Malware was likely to resemble a hijacking programme and did not consist of any recovery mechanism. Moreover, instead of securing a device, it can hinder the device.
However, the government has not yet identified any important relationship between the Malware and the others which the company is tracking.
“With all the evidence present on the spot, the MTIC is not about to the discover the intent behind this destructive actions, but also not yet informed the risk posed by the action to any government agency, non-profit organisations or enterprise located or with the systems of Ukraine,” the IT technology informed, while urging the government to immediately conduct a thorough and careful investigation and build up the defence measures.
On Friday, the spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Oleg Nikolenko, cited that they have stopped the workings of the government ad various other agencies s websites due to the malicious cyberactivity. Moreover, the ministry of Education also informed that they got a message about an alleged leak of personal data from the systems.
However, the Ukrainian State of Service of Special Communication and Information Protection later mentioned that no data had been leaked as most of the websites of their organisation were restored. It also referred to the attack as the worst hit in the past four years.
The Ministry of Culture and Information Policy blamed Russia behind the attack. Although, Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, claimed that Russia had nothing to do with the attack.