The websites of Ukraine's defense, foreign and interior ministries were unreachable or painfully slow to load Thursday morning after a punishing wave of distributed-denial-of-service attacks as Russia struck at its neighbor, explosions shaking the capital of Kyiv and other major cities.In addition to DDoS attacks on Wednesday, cybersecurity researchers said unidentified attackers had infected hundreds of computers with destructive malware, some in neighboring Latvia and Lithuania.Asked if the denial-of-service attacks were continuing Thursday morning, senior Ukrainian cyber defense official Victor Zhora did not answer. 맥스카지노�Are you serious?" he texted. "There are ballistic missiles here.맥스카지노�"This is terrible. We need the world to stop it. Immediately,맥스카지노� Zhora said of the offensive that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in the pre-dawn hours.Officials have long expected cyber attacks to precede and accompany any Russian military incursion. The combination of DDoS attacks, which bombard websites with junk traffic to render them unreachable, and malware infections hewed to Russia's playbook of wedding cyber operations with real-world aggression.ESET Research Labs said it detected a previously unseen piece of data-wiping malware Wednesday on 맥스카지노�hundreds of machines in the country.맥스카지노� It was not clear how many networks were affected.맥스카지노�With regards whether the malware was successful in its wiping capability, we assume that this indeed was the case and affected machines were wiped,맥스카지노� said ESET research chief Jean-Ian Boutin. He would not name the targets but said they were 맥스카지노�large organizations.맥스카지노�ESET was unable to say who was responsible.Symantec Threat Intelligence detected three organizations hit by the wiper malware 맥스카지노� Ukrainian government contractors in Latvia and Lithuania and a financial institution in Ukraine, said Vikram Thakur, its technical director. Both countries are NATO members.맥스카지노�The attackers have gone after these targets without much caring for where they may be physically located,맥스카지노� he said.All three had 맥스카지노�close affiliation with the government of Ukraine,맥스카지노� said Thakur, saying Symantec believed the attacks were 맥스카지노�highly targeted.맥스카지노� He said roughly 50 computers at the financial outfit were impacted, some with data wiped.Asked about the wiper attack on Wednesday, Zhora had no comment.Boutin said the malware맥스카지노�s timestamp indicated it was created in late December.맥스카지노�Russia likely has been planning this for months, so it is hard to say how many organizations or agencies have been backdoored in preparation for these attacks,맥스카지노� said Chester Wisniewski, principal research scientist at the cybersecurity firm Sophos. He guessed the Kremlin intended with the malware to 맥스카지노�send the message that they have compromised a significant amount of Ukrainian infrastructure and these are just little morsels to show how ubiquitous their penetration is.맥스카지노�Word of the wiper follows a mid-January attack that Ukrainian officials blamed on Russia in which the defacement of some 70 government websites was used to mask intrusions into government networks in which at least two servers were damaged with wiper malware masquerading as ransomware.Cyberattacks have been a key tool of Russian aggression in Ukraine since before 2014, when the Kremlin annexed Crimea and hackers tried to thwart elections. They were also used against Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008. Their intent can be to sow panic, confuse and distract.Distributed-denial-of-service attacks are among the least impactful because they don맥스카지노�t entail network intrusion. Such attacks barrage websites with junk traffic so they become unreachable.The DDoS targets Wednesday included the defense and foreign ministries, the Council of Ministers and Privatbank, the country맥스카지노�s largest commercial bank. Many of the same sites were similarly knocked offline Feb. 13-14 in DDoS attacks that the U.S. and U.K. governments quickly blamed on Russia맥스카지노�s GRU military intelligence agencyWednesday맥스카지노�s DDoS attacks appeared less impactful than the earlier onslaught 맥스카지노� with targeted sites soon reachable again 맥스카지노� as emergency responders blunted them. Zhora맥스카지노�s office, Ukraine맥스카지노�s information protection agency, said responders switched to a different DDoS protection service provider.Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at the network management firm Kentik Inc., recorded two attack waves each lasting more than an hour.A spokesman for California-based Cloudflare, which provides services to some of the targeted sites, said Wednesday that DDoS attacks in Ukraine had been until then sporadic but on the rise in the past month but 맥스카지노�relatively modest compared to large DDoS attacks we맥스카지노�ve handled in the past.맥스카지노�The West blames Russia맥스카지노�s GRU for some of the most damaging cyberattacks on record, including a pair in 2015 and 2016 that briefly knocked out parts of Ukraine맥스카지노�s power grid and the NotPetya 맥스카지노�wiper맥스카지노� virus of 2017, which caused more than $10 billion of damage globally by infecting companies that do business in Ukraine with malware seeded through a tax preparation software update.The wiper malware detected in Ukraine this year has so far been manually activated, as opposed to a worm like NotPetya, which can spread out of control across borders.