Ukraine has reported an increase in cyberattacks targeting the country’s systems in the second quarter of the year. Ukraine recently released a report from the country’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection describing the increase in cyberattacks. Although attacks have been steadily increasing since Russia’s invasion, the rise in the second quarter of 2022 was unexpected. The period say 19 billion events processed by Ukraine’s National Vulnerability Detection and Cyber Incidents System. In addition, Ukraine observed a significant increase in malicious hacker group activity including the distribution of malware. Compared to the first quarter of the year, Q2 saw a 38% increase in this category.

Ukraine stated that the main goals of attackers targeting the nation are cyber espionage and to disrupt state information services. The number of critical events that originated from Russian IP addresses actually decreased when compared to the first quarter. Ukraine largely attributed this to safeguards put in place to block Russian IP addresses. The largest number of events are coming from IP addresses in the USA, however, many of these are likely spoofed using tools such as VPNs.

Read More: Ukraine’s Cyber Agency Reports Q2 Cyber-Attack Surge