Internet hackers attack Ukraine government websites

Feb 2, 2012, 19:21 GMT

Kiev - Hackers on Thursday attacked the site of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and other government web pages to retaliate against the shutdown of a popular file-sharing site.

The assaults left Yanukovych's website operating with long delays and the site of the SBU, Ukraine's national intelligence agency, totally inaccessible.

The official website of Regions of Ukraine, Yanukovych's political party, was also targeted and taken offline.

The website of Ukraine's Interior Ministry, which on January 31 ordered the file-trading site www.ex.ua disabled because of intellectual property and copyright infringement complaints by the US was, likewise, not functioning on Thursday.

Interior Ministry agents in subsequent raids confiscated more than 200 servers across Ukraine because of allegations they had been used to share pirated software and movies in cooperation with the site, which reportedly had become one of Ukraine's most heavily-used.

Artyem Afyan, a lawyer representing the Ukrainian company operating the www.ex.ua website, told the Korrespondent web magazine the Interior Ministry had cancelled the injuction against the site's operation. However, it was not functioning on Thursday.

Ukrainian hacker chat sites had discussed possible attacks against government websites as a way to defend the web-sharing site, which allowed users in most countries to download recent popular audio and video content, including recent Hollywood movies, for free.

Also available at the click of a mouse were popular computer programmes such as Photoshop and the Windows operating system.