The news came early morning Friday when several governmental websites were reportedly crippled or partly disrupted by what is believed to be a ‘massive’  hacking attack.

The alleged DDos attack stuck at about  5 a.m.  leaving the ministries of Foreign Affairs, the education ministry, agriculture and several other state agencies  knocked out.

The hackers also targeted state services Diya that now runs a notice the access to its website is ‘temporarily restricted’.

The online debacle started with an ominous message that came up on the websites of  the ministries of foreign affairs and agriculture, saying : “Ukrainian! All information about you has become public. All your personal date will be made available on the web, be afraid and expect worse. It’s your past, present and future. It is for Volyn, OUN-UPA, Galychyna, Polissya, and our historical lands”.

 

The SBU, Ukraine’s security service, confirmed the governmental websites have been targeted in a hacking attack, arguing the disruption though didn’t lead to personal information leaks.

‘The front pages of these websites have been defaced with messages of provocative character. Despite that, the websites’ content wasn’t changed, and the available information shows there was no leak of personal data’, said the SBU in a statement, adding they had the operations of the governmental websites temporarily suspended to prevent other cyberattacks and ‘pinpoint the technical problem’.

State special communications and information protection agency said it was collecting ‘digital evidence’ on the incident, adding the most of ‘state resources’ have been restored while others will be made available ‘shortly’.

The cyberattack was condemned by Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, who claimed the EU cyber and security experts will meet to decide on ways to help Kyiv.

“We are going to mobilise all our resources to help Ukraine to tackle this, said Borrell, adding “It’s difficult to say [who is behind it].