Cyberattacks knock Ukrainian government, bank websites offline

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

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.

They are the first steps in a planned series of retaliatory measures devised to be cranked up if Russian President Vladimir Putin orders an attack or pushes his troops deeper into Ukraine.

The sanctions that took effect Wednesday targeted senior Russian government officials, several companies and hundreds of lawmakers who voted in favor of recognizing the independence of separatist parts of southeast Ukraine.

The sanctions are mostly a freeze on the assets of those listed and a ban on them traveling in the 27-nation EU.