Post-invasion, hackers have targeted European
organizations that aid Ukrainian refugees,
according to Zhora and the cybersecurity firm
Proofpoint. Authorities have not specified which
organizations or what may have been stolen.
Yet another attack, on April 1, crippled Ukraine’s
National Call Center, which runs a hotline for
complaints and inquiries on a wide array of
matters: corruption, domestic abuse, people
displaced by the invasion, war veteran benefits.
Used by hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, it
issues COVID-19 vaccine certificates and collects
callers’ personal data including emails, addresses
and phone numbers.
Adam Meyers, senior vice president of
intelligence at the cybersecurity firm
CrowdStrike, believes the attack may, like
many others, have a greater psychological than
intelligence-gathering impact — aiming to
degrade Ukrainians’ trust in their institutions.
“Make them scared that when the Russians take
over, if they don’t cooperate, the Russians are
going to know who they are, where they are and
come after them,” Meyers said.
The attack knocked the center offline for at
least three days, center director Marianna
Vilshinska said: “We couldn’t work. Neither
phones nor chatbots worked. They broke down
all the system.”
Hackers calling themselves the Cyber Army
of Russia claimed to steal personal data on 7
million people in the attack. However, Vilshinska
denied they breached the database with users’
personal information. “They didn’t get any
valuable information,” she said.