State special communications and information protection agency said it is still assessing the damage caused by a shutdown suffered by governmental websites early morning Friday after a massive cyberattack.

In a briefing held later into the day, agency deputy head Viktor Zhora said the scale of the cyberattack made them shut down the governmental sites to protect them from further possible disruptions.

The hack knocked out the websites of several key Ukrainian ministries early Friday with hackers defacing front pages of the websites with a threat the seized personal data will be leaked in the public domain.

Zhora said the investigation is still ongoing on who was behind the hack admitting the agency  will have to be ready to address  the scenarios where hackers can renew their cyber-attacks exploiting possible vulnerabilities of October CMS systems commonly used by state offices.

The preliminary assessment shows the systems though have not not impacted and no personal data has not beencompromised either , added the special communications agency senior.

The cyber attack also prompted the agency cyber incident-response team put up a list of recommendations that can help state institutions to prevent and mitigate the effects of possible infections and data breaches.