Ukraine said on Sunday that Russia was the cause of a cyberattack attack that destroyed its government websites and suspected that Russia was holding a growing "integrated war" against its neighbors.
A statement from the Department of Digital Development came a day after Microsoft said a number of computer systems in unspecified numbers of Ukrainian government agencies were infected with destructive malware hidden as ransomware. That disclosure has suggested that the hacking attack on official websites last week was a joke.
"All the evidence points to Russia as the cause of the cyberattack attack. "Moscow continues to fight a mixed war and builds its strength on information and on the Internet," the department said in a statement.
The attack comes as the threat of Russia's invasion of Ukraine nears and talks with ambassadors to resolve the issue appear to be stagnant.
Microsoft said in a short blog post on Saturday that it began discovering malicious computer programs on Thursday. That will coincide with an attack that took over 70 Ukrainian government websites at one time offline.
Microsoft claims in a separate, technological post that the programs involved "include a wide range of governmental, non-profit, and technical organizations." He said he did not know how many organizations in Ukraine or elsewhere might be affected but said he expected to learn about many diseases.
On Sunday, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the US and private companies were still working to determine the source of the attack. He said the United States had warned for months about an online attack from Russia and was working with Ukraine to improve the country's defense.
"This is part of a Russian comic book," he said on CBS television's "Face the Nation".
The chief of cybersecurity in the Kyiv private sector, Oleh Derevianko, told the Associated Press that the intruders had infiltrated government networks through a shared software provider in a supply chain attack as Russia's 2020 cyberespionage campaign targeted the US government.
In 2017, Russia targeted Ukraine in one of the worst-hit online attacks on the NotPetya virus, which caused more than $ 10 billion (approximately Rs. 74,150 crore) worldwide. That virus, also known as ransomware, was the so-called "wiper" that wiped out all networks.
In Friday's incident of cyber corruption, a message left by the attackers said they had destroyed the information and posted it online, which Ukrainian authorities have said has not happened.
The message told the people of Ukraine that they were "afraid and expecting the worst."