Hacking

Threat actors defaced Ukrainian government websites

Threat actors defaced multiple Ukrainian government websites after talks between Ukrainian, US, and Russian officials hit a dead this week.

Threat actors have defaced multiple websites of the Ukrainian government on the night between January 13 and January 14. The attacks were launched after talks between Ukrainian, US, and Russian officials hit a dead end on Thursday.

The attackers deleted the content of multiple websites, including the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Defense, the State Emergency Service, and the Cabinet of Ministers.

Defaced websites were displaying the following message in Russian, Ukrainian and Polish languages.

“Ukrainian! All your personal data has been sent to a public network. All data on your computer is destroyed and cannot be recovered. All information about you stab (public, fairy tale and wait for the worst. It is for you for your past, the future and the future. For Volhynia, OUN UPA, Galicia, Poland and historical areas.” reads a translation of the message.

Ukrainian Government is investigating the attack, but intelligence experts speculate the offensive was launched by Russia-linked actors. The Ukrainian government has yet to officially attribute the attacks to any nation-state actor.

According to journalist Kim Zetter, attackers apparently exploited a vulnerability in the October CMS tracked as CVE-2021-32648, a news later confirmed by the national CERT.

“On the night of January 13-14, a number of government websites, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Education and Science and others, were hacked. Provocative messages were posted on the main page of these sites. The content of the sites was not changed and the leakage of personal data, according to preliminary information, did not occur.” reads the advisory published by CERT-UA “According to the results of processing possible attack vectors, the use of the October CMS vulnerability by attackers is not excluded:”

Ukrainian CERT states personal data was not stolen by attackers.

The CERT-UA provided recommendations on how to recover the compromised websites.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Ukrainian government websites)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

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