The Ukrainian outlet The Kyiv Independent has been targeted in a large-scale cyber attack. Since 3 November, hackers have accessed the site’s admin panel and one of its newsletter services, using them to post fake news and send text messages to readers, chief editor Olha Rudenko reported in a Facebook post.
She said that the fake messages claimed, in Russian, that a nuclear warhead had been launched at Kyiv.
The team promptly took down the posts on the site, sent an explanation to subscribers, and addressed the vulnerability that had been identified. However, a second attack followed shortly after, with the perpetrators sending out emails in Russian and English.
“What’s important is that we don’t store financial information, the banking details of people who support us, at all, so that is safe. For now there is no reason to believe that the hackers accessed anything other than the admin panel and the newsletter service, but we are still running checks on this,” Olha Rudenko stressed.
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The outlet remarked that this was the first hack of its kind in almost five years of The Kyiv Independent’s work. The team is now working to fully address the consequences and fix all possible vulnerabilities.
Earlier, readers of the Ukrainian news outlet The Kyiv Independent received emails with a false message about an upcoming nuclear strike on Kyiv. The newsroom’s preliminary assessment showed that Russia may be behind the attack.
