Ukrainian banks and government websites suffer from cyberattack.

• On Wednesday, a mass distributed denial of service attack caused several Ukrainian government websites to go offline, according to an official statement.
• An attacker overwhelms a victim's network or server with traffic, causing others to be unable to access it, through a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
• The outages are not yet confirmed, but they coincide with Russia's positioning of troops for an invasion of Ukraine.

On Wednesday, several Ukrainian government websites were down due to a mass distributed denial of service attack, as announced by Mykhailo Fedorov, head of Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation, in his Telegram channel.

According to Fedorov, the attack that affected some banks started at approximately 4 p.m. local time. He did not disclose which banks were targeted or the extent of the damage caused.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cabinet of Ministers, and Rada websites were among those that went down on Wednesday morning Eastern time. Officials tried to redirect traffic to other sites to minimize damage, according to him.

An attacker overwhelms a victim's network or server with traffic, causing others to be unable to access it, through a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

As Russia positions troops around Ukraine's borders, the source of the attack remains unclear, but President Biden has stated that Russia has begun an invasion after ordering troops into two pro-Russian breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russian banks, sovereign debt, and individuals close to the Russian government.

The White House is closely monitoring the reports.

Last week, Ukraine experienced a separate attack that resulted in the takedown of four government websites, as reported by NBC News. Additionally, around the same time, Ukraine's Cyber Police stated that many residents received text messages indicating that ATMs in the country were not functioning, although it was unclear if any ATMs were actually affected, as reported by NBC News.

Though Russia denied responsibility for last week's attack on the Ukrainian government websites, the White House still attributed the earlier attack to Russian agents.

On Wednesday, a White House official informed NBC News that the recent incidents are consistent with Russia's efforts to destabilize Ukraine through cyber activity. The official also stated that they have been in touch with Ukraine regarding their cyber-related needs, including just today.

The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to a request for comment from its representative.