Ukraine websites knocked offline in cyberattacks

Ukrainian government and banking websites have been knocked offline with another wave of distributed-denial-of-service attacks. The targets Wednesday included the defense, foreign and interior ministries, as well as Privatbank, the country's largest commercial bank.

Many of the same sites were similarly hit in Feb.13-14 attacks that the U.S. and U.K. governments quickly blamed on Russia's GRU military intelligence agency. Such attacks barrage websites with junk traffic, rendering them unreachable.





Wednesday's DDoS attacks appeared to be less impactful than the previous onslaught, with targeted sites soon reachable again as emergency responders blunted them.

Cyberattacks have been a key tool of Russian aggression in Ukraine since 2014, when the Kremlin annexed Crimea and hackers tried to thwart elections.