Ukraine accuses Russia of cyberattack targeting critical infrastructure

Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration and Minister of Justice Olha Stefanishyna reported that Russia was involved.

“Now, together with the team and specialists from other services, we are coordinating work to counter the cyberattack and restore the systems. It is already clear that the attack was carried out by Russians to disrupt the critical infrastructure of the state. Our specialists are working in an intensified mode to restore access to the registries step by step. According to a preliminary assessment, there are no threats to other resources,” Stefanishyna wrote.

According to the Vice Prime Minister, the State Register of Civil Status Acts, the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs, and the State Register of Rights to Real Estate and Their Encumbrances will be restored first. 

“The time for priority recovery will be approximately up to 2 weeks.  Specifics of service delivery to citizens will be provided tomorrow during the day. After full restoration, a thorough analysis of the attack will be carried out together with the relevant authorities to strengthen protection against similar interventions in the future,” the statement said.

Olha Stefanishyna stated that they had the situation under control.

On December 19, the Judicial and Legal Newspaper reported technical problems.

When trying to access the websites, users receive the message “An error occurred while processing your request”. According to the Ministry of Justice, the problems are observed at the level of network infrastructure.

“We would like to inform you that there are currently problems at the level of network infrastructure, which is why the Unified and State Registers, the creation and operation of which falls within the competence of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, as well as the websites of the Ministry of Justice, the State Enterprise 'NAIS' and the call center are temporarily unavailable,” they said.

The Ministry of Justice added that the company's specialists are working to resolve technical issues to resume work.

• On the morning of December 19, a large-scale technical failure occurred in the Reserve+ application.