Petro Bilyk, Innovation Director of Juscutum revealed the situation of hacker attacks in Ukraine in an interview for German radio M94.5. We share with you the details of his speech about cybersecurity in our country.
1) How long have hacking/hackers been a problem for Ukraine?
We have faced active cyberattacks since the Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the hybrid war in the East of Ukraine.
We have been faced this for 6 years. And have some big of them. Some of them were on the West of Ukraine in 2016 with the first-ever cyberattack to cause a blackout, an unprecedented act of cyberwar that turned off the lights for a quarter-million Ukrainians.
Another one was in 2017 release of the NotPetya worm that spread globally from Ukraine to cause $10 billion in damage, and a cyberattack that temporarily destroyed the IT backend of a lot of companies.
By the data of Microsoft Ukraine is one of three countries in the world that suffers from cyberattacks.
The last attack on the sites of state agencies was dangerous but by the announcement of The Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Digital Transformation personal data of Ukrainian didn’t leak.
This attack was on the administrative rights of the company which administrates state agency websites.
Also, we face information attacks in media which shares disinformation about the actions of state agencies and also by the reason of the attack.
2) What happens after a hacker is issued?
It is so difficult to prove to find evidence.
For example, The Department of Justice has named and charged six men for allegedly carrying out many of the most costly cyberattacks in history in Ukraine after three years of dedication.
The hacker's group is located in the Russian federation and
that's why can’t sue them.
3) How long have you been defending yourself from hackers?
A number of departments and divisions deal with cyber defense in Ukraine. First of all, these are the Cyber Police, cyber centers, CSIRT-NBU - the response team of the National Bank, CERT-UA - a specialized structural unit of the State Cyber Defense Center of the State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine and other bodies.
Ukrainian security forces constantly report on their achievements in the field of cybersecurity.