Ukraine Hit by More than 3,000 Cyberattacks in Just One Year

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) revealed how extensive cyber incidents and cyberattacks have been since 2022, with over 3,000 incidents affecting the country's infrastructure.

No doubt Ukraine has been fighting on two fronts since Russia invaded. We've had a few glimpses into what the country has been fighting on the cyber front, but only now has the CERT-UA revealed just how relentless these attacks have been.

"A lot of critical infrastructure facilities of Ukraine are targeted by enemy hackers, who never give up attempts to leave Ukrainians without vital services," said the CERT-UA in a press release.

"Russian hackers are still infiltrating into critical infrastructure networks through their managers' devices (due to the use of unlicensed software) as well as through the devices of IT administrators who believed they were secure, and even through trusted relationships with suppliers, including software developers' corporate networks," the institution explained.

Of the more than 3,000 security incidents, 886 involved attempts to deploy malicious code. Around 600 attacks were geared towards gathering information, such as credentials, and another 600 to simply gain access to systems. Of course, many of these attacks could have been for all of the above, as the goals are not mutually exclusive.

Public and local authorities have been among the most targeted, followed by commercial organizations. Interestingly, few of these attacks have been directed at critical infrastructure, but it's likely that Ukraine's preparedness in this regard before the invasion played a significant role.

Despite the war in Ukraine going on for more than a year, the intensity of the battles in cyberspace has kept up. If anything, CERT-UA reported numerous attempts to compromise all kinds of online resources and institutions in the past year, and attacks won't likely wane in the near future.