Cyberattack in Ukraine targets government websites

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A huge cyberattack left a number of Ukrainian government websites temporarily unavailable on Friday, officials said.

While it wasn't immediately clear who was behind the cyberattack, the disruption came amid heightened tensions with Russia and after talks between Moscow and the West failed to yield any significant progress this week.

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko told The Associated Press it was too soon to tell who could have been behind the attack.

"But there is a long record of Russian cyber assaults against Ukraine in the past,” he said.

Moscow had previously denied involvement in cyberattacks against Ukraine.

The websites of the country's Cabinet, seven ministries, the Treasury, the National Emergency Service and the state services website, where Ukrainians' electronic passports and vaccination certificates are stored, were temporarily unavailable Friday as a result of the hack.

The websites contained a message in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish, saying that Ukrainians' personal data has been leaked into the public domain. “Be afraid and expect the worst. This is for your past, present and future," the message read, in part.

Ukraine's State Service of Communication and Information Protection said that no personal data has been leaked.

The country's minister for digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, insisted that personal data was safe, since “the operability of the websites, not the registries,” was affected by the hack. Fedorov said that some of the attacked websites were blocked by their administrators in order to contain the damage and investigate the attacks.

He added that “a large part” of the affected websites have been restored.

The U.S. estimates Russia has massed about 100,000 troops near Ukraine, a buildup...