October 27th, 2019 marks the day for the Parliamentarian elections of Ukraine, the government authorities are worried that Russia might try to influence the polls by launching cyber attacks on electoral servers and personal computers of the election staff way before the elections.
Ukraine’s cyberpolice said last week that they have received reports from all corners of the region stating that a group of hackers linked to Russian intelligence was trying to target the election staff with phishing email attacks.
Serhiy Demedyuk confirmed the news to a source from Reuters and said that the staff is receiving virus filled digital invitation cards, shopping invitations and such in the form of software updates and other malicious phishing material since dec’18.
The news is out that a hacking group was getting busy on the dark web by buying personal details of the election officials like phones numbers, emails, contact addresses, and bank account numbers by paying cryptocurrency to anonymous resources which offer such services discreetly.
Since, December last year, attacks have increased on the country’s energy, transport and banking systems.
Early this month, Ukraine’s intelligence agency has learned that attacks are being carried out to siphon vital information regarding elections officials in order to create disruption during the Ukraine elections 2019.
However, Russian spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov said that his country has no need to interfere in the elections of other countries.
Note- the election staff and the cyber police have jointly confirmed that no election network has been infiltrated till date and all security measures are being taken to keep a tab on such activities in near future.
What is the need for Russia to cyber attack Ukraine?
In short, the relationship between Ukraine and Russian have soured from 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and since then Kiev has been regularly indulging in accusing Russia of orchestrating large scale cyber attacks as a part of ‘Hybrid war’ against Ukraine.
