Ukrainian nuclear company condemns “unprecedented” Russian cyber attack on its website

On Tuesday, in a press release, the Ukrainian general operator of nuclear power plants Energoatom denounced the “unprecedented” Russian cyber attack on its site, noting that its operation was not disturbed.

“On August 16, 2022, the most powerful cyber attack since the beginning of the Russian invasion took place against the official Energoatom website,” the operator said via Telegram. He added that the site “was attacked from Russian territory.”

The Russian group “People Cyber ​​Army” used 7.25 million Internet bots that attacked the Energoatom website for three hours, and the Ukrainian company asserted that this hacking attempt “did not have a significant impact on the work of the Energoatom website.” .

The Telegram channel, dubbed in Russian as the People’s Internet Army, called on its supporters this afternoon to attack the Energoatom website.

In the evening, she announced a “change”, setting as the target of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, whose position was experiencing difficulties.

The attacks come amid tension around Ukraine’s nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, located in the south of the country and occupied by Russian forces since March, shortly after Moscow launched an invasion of its neighbour.

Several strikes accused by Moscow and Kiev have targeted this facility, the largest in Europe, raising fears of a nuclear catastrophe.

Ukraine has four nuclear power plants, which, before the invasion, provided about half of the electricity production of this vast country, which is located on the border of the European Union.

Ukraine, then a Soviet republic, was the scene of the worst nuclear disaster in history in 1986, when a reactor at the Chernobyl Power Plant (North) exploded, contaminating much of Europe.

Kyiv shut down the last operating Chernobyl reactor in 2000. After the invasion began last February, Russian forces captured the facility and the surrounding highly radioactive area for several weeks in a 30-kilometer radius.